Foreign Affairs MAR-APR

The Case
for Space
Neil deGrasse Tyson on Why We
Should Spend More Time and
Money Reaching for the Stars
Not the Right Stu
David Campbell & Robert Putnam on How the
Tea Party Undermines Religion in America
Reihan Salam on the Death of Moderate
Republicans (and Their Possible Resurrection)
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The Arab Spring
at One
Fouad Ajami
The Next World Bank
Robert Zoellick
NATOs Triumph
in Libya
Ivo Daalder &
James Stavridis
America the Safe
Micah Zenko &
Michael Cohen
Not Time to
Attack Iran
Colin Kahl
Good Night, Baghdad
Ned Parker
Animal Welfare
Goes Global
Miyun Park &
Peter Singer
Richelieu the
Gambler
David Bell
march / apri l 2012
The Future of U.S.-Chinese Relations
Henry Kissinger
90
years
01_Cover_MA2012_Sub.indd 1 1/23/12 2:11 PM
The Case
for Space
Neil deGrasse Tyson on Why We
Should Spend More Time and
Money Reaching for the Stars
Not the Right Stu
David Campbell & Robert Putnam on How the
Tea Party Undermines Religion in America
Reihan Salam on the Death of Moderate
Republicans (and Their Possible Resurrection)
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F
O
R

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A
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E
$9. 95 us a
f ore i gna f fa i rs. com
The Arab Spring
at One
Fouad Ajami
The Next World Bank
Robert Zoellick
NATOs Triumph
in Libya
Ivo Daalder &
James Stavridis
America the Safe
Micah Zenko &
Michael Cohen
Not Time to
Attack Iran
Colin Kahl
Good Night, Baghdad
Ned Parker
Animal Welfare
Goes Global
Miyun Park &
Peter Singer
Richelieu the
Gambler
David Bell
march / apri l 2012
Henry Kissinger
90
years
01_Cover_MA2012_Sub.indd 1 1/23/12 2:11 PM
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CHINA DAILY, the national English-language newspaper in China, is now printed in nine cities in the
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lanta and Boston. CHINA DAILY USA, China Dailys US edition, launched in 2009 and published Monday
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Subscribe to the paper version of China Daily USA, email readers@chinadailyusa.com
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marc h / ap ri l 2 0 1 2
vol ume 9 1 , numb e r 2
Comments
NATOs Victory in Libya Ivo H. Daalder and James G. Stavridis 2
NATOs operation in Libya has rightly been praised for saving lives and ending a tyran-
nical regime, write the U.S. permanent representative to NATO and its supreme allied
commander for Europe. But to replicate the success, member states must reinforce
their political cohesion and improve the burden sharing that made the mission work.
Rethinking Latin America Christopher Sabatini 8
U.S. regionalists need a reminder that development doesnt end politics and that con-
temporary Latin America has its own power dynamics. As the region enters a new era
marked by increasing geopolitical autonomy and intraregional rivalries, it should be
addressed with the mindset of international relations, not just comparative politics.
Chinese Computer Games Adam Segal 14
Chinese cyberattacks are stealing priceless intellectual property and crucial military
secrets from companies and governments around the globe. Negotiations with Beijing
are unlikely to help, since China has little interest in cracking down on hacking. So
Washington must focus on defenses, not diplomacy.
Essays
The Case for Space Neil deGrasse Tyson 22
As Mars looms within reach and China ramps up its space program, the United States
is turning its back on the stars through stinginess and partisan bickering. Yes, space
exploration is expensive. But the beneftsfrom jobs to technological innovation to
basic scientifc progressare worth it. The country cant aord to abandon space.
God and Caesar in America
David E. Campbell and Robert D. Putnam 34
Religion has always played a role in U.S. politics. But these days, as religious infuence
hits a high-water mark, something strange is happening: Americans are abandoning
the pews in record numbers. With God and Caesar increasingly entangled, more and
more Americans, especially young ones, are opting out altogether.
02_TOC_MarchApril.indd 1 1/17/12 11:31 AM
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Contents
foreignaffairs
.
March / April 2012
The Future of U.S.-Chinese Relations Henry A. Kissinger 44
Signifcant groups in both China and the United States claim that a contest for suprem-
acy between the two countries is inevitable and perhaps already under way. They are
wrong. Beijing and Washington may not, in the end, be able to transcend the forces
pushing them toward confict. But they owe it to themselves, and the world, to try.
The Arab Spring at One Fouad Ajami 56
Terrible rulers, sullen populations, a terrorist fringethe Arabs exceptionalism was
becoming not just a human disaster but a moral one. Then, a frustrated Tunisian
fruit vendor summoned his fellows to a new history, and millions heeded his call.
The third Arab awakening came in the nick of time, and it may still usher in freedom.
Why We Still Need the World Bank Robert B. Zoellick 66
More than 60 years after the World Bank was founded, developing countries still turn
to it for fnancing and expertise. But the world is changing, and so must the bank, argues
its president. Although it has adapted to shifts in economic infuence and the rise of
emerging markets, the bank must become even more innovative and representative.
Clear and Present Safety Micah Zenko and Michael A. Cohen 79
U.S. ocials and national security experts chronically exaggerate foreign threats,
suggesting that the world is scarier and more dangerous than ever. But that is just
not true. From the U.S. perspective, at least, the world today is remarkably secure,
and Washington needs a foreign policy that refects that reality.
The Iraq We Left Behind Ned Parker 94
Weeks after the last U.S. soldier fnally left the country, Iraq is on the road to
becoming a failed state, with a deadlocked political system, an authoritarian leader,
and a looming threat of disintegration. Baghdad can still pull itself together, but
only if Washington starts applying the right kind of democratic pressureand fast.
War Downsized Carter Malkasian and J. Kael Weston 111
Tempting as it would be to pull all Western forces out of Afghanistan soon, the
United States should leave some civilian and military advisers behind. Using advisers
isnt risk free, but such a strategy could help ensure Afghan stability at a relatively
low cost and become a good model for use elsewhere in this age of austerity.
The Globalization of Animal Welfare Miyun Park and Peter Singer 122
As demand for meat has spread around the world, so, too, have the brutal industrial-
scale methods used to raise and slaughter animals for food, raising a host of pressing
ethical and environmental questions. Improving animal welfare is no longer an issue
of private, or even national, concernit is now a global imperative.
A Farewell to Fossil Fuels Amory B. Lovins 134
With the costs of oil and coal rising, the United States needs to wean itself o fossil
fuels, a goal best accomplished by making buildings and vehicles more ecient and
switching to renewable power. The task might seem quixotic, but it actually will not
require miraclesjust the widespread application of existing technology.
02_TOC_MarchApril_Blues.indd 3 1/26/12 10:27 AM
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March / April 2012
Reviews & Responses
The Missing Middle in American Politics Reihan Salam 148
Moderate Republicans have gone virtually extinct because they never formed a real
movement with a coherent program. Their absence has left a vacuum in todays GOP,
one flled by angry antigovernment rhetoric and ideological extremism. Two new books
describe how the Republican Party got into this messand how it can get out.
Poker Lessons From Richelieu David A. Bell 156
A new biography of Cardinal Richelieu shows him to be one of the greatest examples
in history of the politician as high-stakes gambler. He may not have created modern
France or made it the leading force in Europe, as some argue. But his actions paved
the way for his successors to do so, which is no small feat.
Freedoms Secret Recipe Michael Mann 161
In his powerful and comprehensive survey of global political history, Francis Fukuyama
explains how liberal democracies have managed to achieve what he calls the miracle
of modern politics: balancing state power, the rule of law, and accountability to
citizens. But past results, he warns, are no guarantee of future success.
Not Time to Attack Iran Colin H. Kahl 166
Matthew Kroenigs recent article in this magazine argued that a military strike
against Iran would be the least bad option for stopping its nuclear program. But
the war Kroenig calls for would be far messier than he predicts, and Washington
still has better options available.
Recent Books on International Relations 174
Including Richard Cooper on the global service economy, Walter Russell Mead on
Condoleezza Rice and Richard Holbrooke, Richard Feinberg on Guantnamo
Bay, and Andrew Nathan on Chinas thought management.
Letters to the Editor 197
Including Jack Chow on Chinas health crisis, David Harris on Israels quest for
peace, and others.
The articles in Foreign Aairs do not represent any consensus of beliefs. We do not expect that
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02_TOC_MarchApril.indd 5 1/17/12 11:31 AM
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Comments
By any measure, NATO
succeeded in Libya. It saved tens of
thousands of lives from almost certain
destruction and enabled the Libyan
opposition to overthrow one of
the worlds longest-ruling dictators.
NATOs Victory in Libya Ivo H. Daalder and James G. Stavridis 2
Rethinking Latin America Christopher Sabatini 8
Chinese Computer Games Adam Segal 14
u. s. navy / nathanael mi ller
Aboard the USS Ponce during the mission in Libya, March 2011
03_comment_div.indd 1 1/17/12 11:34 AM
NATOs Victory in Libya
The Right Way to Run an Intervention
Ivo H. Daalder and James G. Stavridis
[2]
Ivo H. Daalder is U.S. Permanent Representative to NATO. J ames G.
Stavri di s is Supreme Allied Commander Europe and Commander of the
U.S. European Command.
Natos operation in Libya has rightly
been hailed as a model intervention. The
alliance responded rapidly to a deterio-
rating situation that threatened hundreds
of thousands of civilians rebelling against
an oppressive regime. It succeeded in
protecting those civilians and, ultimately,
in providing the time and space necessary
for local forces to overthrow Muammar
al-Qaddaf. And it did so by involving
partners in the region and sharing the
burden among the alliances members.
Natos involvement in Libya demon-
strated that the alliance remains an essen-
tial source of stability. But to preserve
that role, nato must solidify the political
cohesion and shared capabilities that made
the operation in Libya possibleparticu-
larly as its leaders prepare for the upcom-
ing nato summit in Chicago this May.
rapi d response
When the people of Libya rose up against
Qaddaf in February 2011, many hoped
that the nonviolent protests would follow
the successful path of similar uprisings
in Tunisia and Egypt. But rather than
capitulate, as had Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali
and Hosni Mubarak, Qaddaf launched a
brutal crackdown.
The international community re-
sponded swiftly. In late February, the
un Security Council placed sanctions,
an arms embargo, and an asset freeze
on Libya and referred Qaddafs crimes
against humanity to the International
Criminal Court in The Hague. Shortly
thereafter, the Arab League suspended
Libya from its sessions and then called on
the international community to impose
a no-fy zone. On March 17, the Security
Council granted that request, mandating
all necessary measures to protect civilians.
The United States facilitated this rapid
international reaction. In late February,
Washington was the frst country to cut
o Qaddafs funding, freezing $32 billion
in Libyan assets and prompting other
countries to follow suit. Washington also
led the charge for the un resolution that
authorized the intervention, justifying the
action as consistent with the responsibility
04_Daalder_pp2_7.indd 2 1/17/12 11:36 AM
foreignaffairs
.
March / April 2012 [3]
to protect, the norm that calls on the
international community to intervene
when governments fail to safeguard their
own civilians. And on March 19, following
the un authorization, the United States
led a coalition in launching air and missile
strikes against Libyan forcesincluding
against a large concentration of armored
vehicles approaching Benghazi, the head-
quarters of the revolution and home to
750,000 people whom Qaddaf had labeled
as rats when he threatened to cleanse
Libya house by house. The initial inter-
vention rescued the people of Benghazi,
obliterated Libyas air defense system
within 72 hours, and deployed aircraft and
naval vessels to enforce the un resolution.
Following this early success, U.S.
President Barack Obama sought natos
agreement to take over command and
control of the operation in order to ensure
the eective integration of allied and
partnered militaries. Washington would
continue to participate in military opera-
tions but would do so mainly by gathering
and analyzing intelligence, refueling
nato and partner aircraft, and contrib-
uting other high-end military capabilities,
such as electronic jamming.
With many nato countries, including
Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Italy,
the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, the
United Kingdom, and the United States,
already contributing to the intervention,
nato was the logical choice to assume
command, and it agreed to do so on
March 27. Dubbed Operation Unifed
Protector, the alliances mission in Libya
consisted of three separate tasks: policing
the arms embargo, patrolling the no-fy
zone, and protecting civilians. Although
it immediately solidifed the maritime
blockade and the no-fy zone, it encoun-
tered diculties in protecting the Libyan
people. The proximity of the regimes
forces, facilities, and equipment to civilian
infrastructure; the initially limited ability
of the Libyan opposition to defend itself
and the population centers under its con-
trol; and the need for nato to minimize
harm to civilians all slowed the operation
and at times led to a perception of dead-
lock and stalemate.
By the middle of August, however, the
opposition had gained enough strength
to attack Qaddafs strongholds, frst in
Tripoli and then in Sirte. Within two
months, the Libyan National Transitional
Council had secured control over the
entire country and rebels had captured
and killed Qaddaf. Operation Unifed
Protector ended on October 31, 222 days
after it had begun.
a teachable moment
By any measure, nato succeeded in Libya.
It saved tens of thousands of lives from
almost certain destruction. It conducted
an air campaign of unparalleled precision,
which, although not perfect, greatly
minimized collateral damage. It enabled
the Libyan opposition to overthrow one
of the worlds longest-ruling dictators. And
it accomplished all of this without a single
allied casualty and at a cost$1.1 billion
for the United States and several billion
dollars overallthat was a fraction of that
spent on previous interventions in the
Balkans, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
But the Libya operation had its
challenges as well, both in conception and
in execution. If nato is to replicate its
success in the future, it must examine
and learn from these challenges.
The frst lesson is that nato is uniquely
positioned to respond quickly and
[4] foreignaffairs
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Volume 91 No. 2
eectively to international crises. Some
countries have signifcant military reach.
But when a group of countries wants to
launch a joint intervention as a coalition
which confers political legitimacyonly
nato can provide the common command
structure and capabilities necessary to plan
and execute complex operations. Multi-
lateral coalitions built on an as-needed
basis, by contrast, have no common doc-
trine for conducting military operations,
no common capabilities or command
structure for quickly integrating national
forces into a cohesive campaign, and no
standing mechanisms for debating and
then deciding on an agreed course of
action. Such ad hoc coalitions therefore
almost always rely disproportionately
on a single nation to bear the brunt of
security burdens that ideally should be
more equally shared.
In Libya, nato coordinated the
actions of 18 countries14 member
states and four partnersunder a unifed
command. The United States certainly
played a critical role, providing intelli-
gence, fueling, and targeting capabilities.
But other states made similarly indis-
pensable contributions. France and the
United Kingdom few over 40 percent
of the sorties, together destroying more
than a third of the overall targets. Italy
provided aircraft for reconnaissance
missions and, along with Greece, access
to a large number of air bases. Belgium,
Canada, Denmark, Norway, and the
United Arab Emirates deployed fghters
for combat operations, and Jordan, the
Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Turkey,
and Qatar helped enforce the no-fy
zone. Many of these states, as well as
Bulgaria and Romania, also deployed
naval assets to enforce the arms embargo.
The second lesson of Libya is that
although natos political unity is
improving, more work must be done.
Nato allies overcame their early dierences
on Libya and forged a course of action
acceptable to all. Every ally contributed to
the operation through natos command
structure, and no allies restricted the use
of their personnel assigned to nato
command centers in places such as Mons,
Belgium; Naples, Italy; or Ramstein,
Germany. But although 14 member states
contributed directly to Operation Unifed
Protector, an equal number did not. Many
of the countries that did not participate
lacked the resources to do so but still lent
their political support. Some countries,
such as Germany, however, decided not to
participate even though they could have.
Berlin did not block natos decision to
act in Libya and even assisted alliance
operations as a whole by increasing its
involvement in aerial surveillance in
Afghanistan. But it abstained from the
un Security Council vote authorizing
the intervention and stayed out of the
military operation. And even though
Poland assisted by selling precision
munitions to other nato countries, it,
too, refrained from participating directly.
Some commentators, such as Anne
Applebaum, have expressed fears that
the absence of a substantial number of
nato members from the mission in Libya
signaled a lack of solidarity or, worse, the
emergence of a two-tiered alliance, in
which some members focus on humani-
tarian and peacekeeping missions and
others bear the burden of combat.
Such a concern is misplacedat least
for now. When natos work is viewed
through the context of the entire span of
its missions, from that in Afghanistan to
[5]
antipiracy operations in the Gulf of Aden,
it becomes clear that every member state
participates to the best of its abilities
including Germany and Poland, both
of which are playing signifcant roles in
Afghanistan and Kosovo. Yet although
the Libya operation showed that the allies
political commitment to nato is improv-
ing, the allies must work to translate
this political will into reality by sharing
more equitably in the alliances overall
defensive burden.
The intervention in Libya also
demonstrated that a politically cohesive
nato can tackle increasingly complex, and
increasingly global, security challenges.
For its frst 40 years, nato concentrated
on defending the borders of its member
states. But after the Cold War, the alliance
expanded its focus beyond deterrence,
making it the partner of choice for inter-
national security operations. This trend
began with the Partnership for Peace in
the mid-1990s, a program of practical
cooperation and political dialogue with
nonmember states across Europe and
Central Asia. And it has continued into
the current century, with 50 nations
placing their forces under natos
command as part of the International
Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan.
Nato again took the lead in Libya.
Some countries hesitated to place nato
in charge of a military action, fearing
that the alliance would not garner enough
support in the region, but it turned out
that Arab states preferred to work through
nato; several of them, such as Jordan,
Morocco, and the United Arab Emirates,
had already participated in nato-led
operations in Kosovo and Afghanistan,
and others had fostered closer relations
with nato through the Mediterranean
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005_r.indd 1 1/24/12 4:16:36 PM
[6] foreignaffairs
.
Volume 91 No. 2
Dialogue and the Istanbul Cooperation
Initiative. These programs, launched in
1994 and 2004, respectively, expanded
natos ability to partner with countries
in North Africa and the Middle East.
These partnerships with non-nato
members signify the increasing role of
the alliance beyond its borders. Such
cooperation may not have a decisive
military impact; as in the Balkans and
Afghanistan, alliance members supplied
the bulk of the military capability in
Libya. (Nearly 90 percent of the non-
U.S. forces in Afghanistan, for example,
come from countries in Europe.) But
this kind of burden sharing is politically
essential to the overall eectiveness of
natos operations. The participation of
Jordan, Morocco, Qatar, and the United
Arab Emirates and their support for
Libyan opposition forces proved critical
to the liberation of Tripoli, both by
demonstrating Arab political support
and by providing additional military
capabilities. Regional participation also
helped allay potential friction within
the alliance, reassuring many otherwise
reluctant nato members of the missions
legitimacy.
i t gets better
However successful, natos intervention
in Libya suggested that the organization
must strengthen its basic infrastructure
if it hopes to increase its role in global
security. Natos integrated command
structure and shared funding bind the
alliance together, but serious gaps remain in
its overall capabilities. Within the com-
mand structure, for example, the alliance
has failed to devote the necessary resourc-
es to developing key skills, including the
capacity to fnd and engage the types of
mobile targets common in contemporary
operations, plan joint operations in
parallel with fast-paced political decision-
making, support the targeting process
with legal advice, and provide timely and
reliable information on operational
developments to the public. Nato has
also neglected to cultivate essential tools
for military campaigns, such as intelligence,
surveillance, reconnaissance, precision
targeting, and aerial refuelingdespite
nearly two decades of experience that
have demonstrated their value.
Instead of investing in nato, many
member states have depended on the
United States to compensate for these
deficiencies. In Libya, Washington
provided 75 percent of the intelligence,
surveillance, and reconnaissance data
employed to protect Libyan civilians
and enforce the arms embargo. It also
contributed 75 percent of the refueling
planes used throughout the mission
without which strike aircraft could not
have lingered near potential targets in
order to respond quickly to hostile forces
threatening to attack civilians. And U.S.
commanders in Europe had to quickly
dispatch over 100 military personnel to the
nato targeting center at the outset of
the intervention when it became clear that
other member states lacked the knowledge
and expertise to provide their aircraft
with the correct targeting information.
The heavy reliance of alliance members
on the United States during the confict
highlighted the cost of a decade of Euro-
pean underinvestment in defense. On
average, U.S. allies in Europe now spend
just 1.6 percent of their gdps on their
militaries, and many spend less than one
percent; the United States, in contrast,
spends over four percent of its gdp. The
foreignaffairs
.
fact that Washington spends nearly three
times as much on defense as the other
27 nato allies combined has opened a
growing divide in the capabilities of the
member states. As former U.S. Secretary
of Defense Robert Gates warned in
his valedictory policy address last June,
this imbalance threatens to create a
two-tiered alliance that will ultimately
prove unsustainable.
Nato began to address these short-
falls before the war in Libya began. At
the Lisbon summit in November 2010,
for example, the alliance adopted a new
strategic concept to guide it for the
next decade. In it, the allies committed
to deploying the full range of capabilities
necessary to deter and defend against
any threat to the safety and security of
[its] populations. It also identifed and
prioritized the ten capabilities that
member states agreed were essential to
the organizations strength not only in
todays operations (such as enhanced
methods to counter improvised explosive
devices and improvements in information
sharing) but also in the future (such as
missile defense and joint intelligence,
surveillance, and reconnaissancea key
defciency in Libya).
The alliance will now have to summon
the political will to implement these
standards in a period of fscal austerity.
Nato countries can continue to invest in
their military capabilities on their own
which means investing ineciently and
often insuciently, while leaning on an
increasingly impatient United States to
make up the dierence. Or member states
can invest through nato and other multi-
national programs, saving money, pro-
moting cooperation, sharing capabilities,
and demonstrating solidarity. Nato will
continue to succeed only if every member
state chooses the latter course.
Should nato members rise to the
challenge, their investments will fund
vital programs that can address some
of the shortfalls of the Libya operation.
One such program is the Alliance Ground
Surveillance system, which is designed
to help locate mobile and concealed
ground forces and will thereby strengthen
natos intelligence, surveillance, and
reconnaissance operations. Members
should also consider pooling their invest-
ments in aerial refueling and precision-
guided weapons and sharing data on
their own national munitions stockpiles
in order to improve planning.
The allies must also remember that
the operation in Libya was relatively
smallabout one-ffth the size of that
in Kosovo in terms of the number of
military assets involved. If defense
spending continues to decline, nato
may not be able to replicate its success
in Libya in another decade. Nato
members must therefore use the Chicago
summit to strengthen the alliance by
ensuring that the burden sharing that
worked so well in Libyaand continues
in Afghanistan today becomes the
rule, not the exception.
Rethinking Latin America
Foreign Policy Is More Than Development
Christopher Sabatini
[8]
Christopher Sabatini is Editor in Chief of Americas Quarterly and Senior
Director of Policy at the Americas Society and the Council of the Americas.
Running down the list of the U.S. State
Departments Latin America policy
objectives in El Pas in September 2010,
the economist Moiss Nam noted that
they focused almost exclusively on domestic
concerns: building democratic institutions,
promoting local social and economic
opportunity, and so forth. These issues
were not only given a higher priority in
policy toward Latin America than they
were for other regions, but they were
also issues largely beyond Washingtons
ability to control.
Nam was correct, but the point can
be taken further. The focus on politics
within Latin American states rather than
on relations between them is characteristic
not simply of the State Department but
also of the Latin American regional studies
community in the United States more
generally, from where the U.S. policy
and advocacy community absorbs much
of its personnel and intellectual orientation.
Such attitudes have harmed U.S. policy
by focusing excessive attention on small
countries with little geostrategic infuence
and fostering the facile notion that
political and economic liberalization are
the necessary and sucient criteria for the
advancement of all major U.S. interests.
This approach has distorted Washingtons
calculations of regional politics and
hampered its ability to counter outside
infuences and deal sensibly with rising
regional powers.
U.S. scholars and policymakers need
a reminder that development does not
mean the end of politics and that twenty-
frst-century Latin America has its own,
autonomous power dynamics. A little
realism would go a long way.
that 80s show
When it comes to Latin America, for
decades U.S. universities and regional
studies centers have focused almost
exclusively on matters of comparative
politics and political and economic
development. In the 1970s and 1980s,
the last time scholars paid much atten-
tion to the regions international relations,
their chief concern was the workings and
implications of U.S. hegemony. The issue
facing both scholars and policymakers
05_Sabatini_pp8_13.indd 8 1/17/12 11:40 AM
foreignaffairs
.
today, however, is what happens as U.S.
power declines and new forces in the
region emerge, and unfortunately, when
it comes to these questions, there is little
intellectual capital on which to draw.
A quick glance at the faculty of major
U.S. universities reveals that work on Latin
America concentrates on social move-
ments, economic development, voting
behavior, civil society, and the like. There
have been no major U.S. academic studies
published on inter-American relations in
decades, and there are few articles on the
topic published in scholarly journals.
Think tanks and nongovernmental
organizations (ngos) dedicated to the
region, meanwhileon both sides of
the political spectrumtend to focus on
domestic concerns, as well. Many working
in this community began their careers
debating human rights issues during the
Cold War, fghting over whether Commu-
nists or right-wing forces were the greater
danger to local citizens. Those violent,
politicized years have thankfully passed,
but much of the ngo community has failed
to move on. The left pays a great deal of
attention to Colombia and Guatemala
(and to denouncing free trade). The right
obsesses about Cuba and Venezuela.
Throw in El Salvador, Honduras, and
Nicaragua, which were the objects of
ideological combat a generation ago, and
you can account for the vast majority of
U.S. discussion of Latin American
issues. Yet none of these countries is a
power broker in the hemisphere today,
and combined they account for barely
20 percent of the regions population.
Such myopia can have serious conse-
quences. On June 30, 2009, the Honduran
military, acting on orders supposedly
from the Honduran Supreme Court and
Congress, roused President Manuel Zelaya
from bed and placed him on a plane to
Costa Rica. Zelayas own actions had
contributed to his unceremonious ouster,
but the regional (and international) con-
sensus was clear: what had occurred was
that classic Latin American maneuver, a
coup. In the hyperpolarized world of
Latin America policy in the United States,
however, politicians and regionalists
quickly took sides. The result was Sena-
tor Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) proclaiming
that what had occurred was not a coup
and attacking the Obama administration
for saying otherwise. DeMint was joined
by some Cuban American colleagues,
with several of them traveling to Hon-
duras to declare their support for the
new government of President Roberto
Michelettiand with DeMint holding up
the nominations of the former National
Security Council ocial Arturo Valenzuela
to be assistant secretary of state for Western
Hemisphere aairs and one of the
countrys most seasoned and well-respected
diplomats, Thomas Shannon, to become
U.S. ambassador to Brazil.
This absurdityblocking for nine
months the appointment of a regional
assistant secretary of state and an ambas-
sador to the regions most important
player (and the worlds seventh-largest
economy) over a minor ideological spat
regarding a tiny countryshows the
lack of seriousness of the workings of
the U.S. Congress in general. But it also
shows how unseriously Latin America
is taken in particular and what sorts of
issues are considered important.
growi ng pai ns
For the last two decades, U.S. policy
toward Latin America has rested on two
[1 0] foreignaffairs
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Volume 91 No. 2
pillars: the promotion of democracy and
the promotion of free trade. Security
and narcotics concerns have infuenced
a few bilateral relationships, but the core
of Washingtons regional agenda has
been driven by the belief that democratic
political development and multilateral
economic liberalization would reinforce
each other and beneft both locals and
the United States. Unfortunately, this
approach has largely ignored local
economic logic and the persistence of
competition between states, not to men-
tion the diversity of market economies.
For example, the basic idea behind
the Free Trade Area of the Americas
(ftaa)announced by U.S. President
Bill Clinton at the Summit of the Ameri-
cas in 1994was that as Latin American
economies reformed, they would hitch
themselves to the U.S. market. But that
overlooked the hard realities of the U.S.
market and its confict with the com-
parative advantages of countries such as
Argentina and Brazil, which saw U.S.
agricultural subsidies as a threat. Wash-
ingtons trade strategy involved slowly
picking o the hemispheres weaker
partners and then, once a bloc had been
established, convincing Brazil and others
to join on U.S. terms. But Brazil and
the other Mercosur countries (Argentina,
Paraguay, and Uruguay) decided to pursue
their own agenda and negotiated free-
trade deals with India, Mexico, and Peru,
as well as partial trade agreements with
Colombia, Ecuador, and Venezuela.
As a result, the United States has
spent almost two decades negotiating
some lesser treatieswith the Dominican
Republic, Central America, Colombia,
Peru, and Chilethat fall far short of
creating a hemispheric single market.
And even that agenda has been undercut
by others, as when Canada recently took
advantage of lengthy U.S. haggling with
Colombia over fne points of labor and
human rights safeguards to negotiate its
own trade agreement there, allowing
its farmers and manufacturers to get a
leg up on their U.S. counterparts.
Beijing has also stepped into the void,
using its growing economic strength to
weaken Washingtons economic leverage
in the hemisphere. China recently dis-
placed the United States as the main
trading partner of Brazil. And China
has signed bilateral trade deals with
Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, and Peru and
provided concessionary loans to Ecuador
and Venezuela.
Democratization, meanwhilepart
of the standard boilerplate in any U.S.
ocials speech on Latin America from
the 1980s onwardhas increasingly
become a matter of subjective interpre-
tation and beyond the reach of U.S.
infuence. During President George W.
Bushs frst term, Washington began to
shift its policy from supporting demo-
cratic processes in general to supporting
specifc outcomes, particularly in Bolivia,
Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.
Under Barack Obama, the focus has
returned to the sanctity of democratic
institutions in general, but calls to respect
and strengthen them have become the
catchall way of admonishing U.S. enemies
(such as President Hugo Chvezs
Venezuela) or encouraging friends (such
as President Sebastin Pieras Chile).
For all the rhetoric, however, consensus
around democracy and democratic rights
has proved elusive. One reason is that
the expansion of the franchise and the
eclipse of traditional party systems have
[1 1 ]
raised the prominence of anti-American
and antimarket voices in the region. In
Bolivia and Venezuela, for example,
the result of political liberalization was the
election of populist governments that
have stoked distrust of Washington to
consolidate their domestic support. Nei-
ther of those countries today even has a
U.S. ambassadorBolivia drummed
out Bushs last appointee for suppos-
edly intervening in local politics, and
Venezuela refused to accept the one
Obama appointed after he criticized
the government in Caracas.
For an example of how local democ-
ratization and economic reform, however
worthwhile in their own right, can lead
to divergence and rivalry with the United
States rather than closer partnership, one
need only glance at the regions rising
great power, Brazil. Braslia has always
pursued an independent course, but under
the last two governmentsof Luiz Incio
Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousse, both
of the Workers Partyit has actively
sought to check U.S. power globally
and regionally.
A sense of Brazils economic arrival
and U.S. decline has fueled Brazils
long-standing desire to assert greater
international infuence and try to rebal-
ance the global order in favor of the
developing world. This agenda can be
seen in Brazils eorts to gain a seat on
an expanded Security Council at the
United Nations, its negotiation of a deal
with Iran and Turkey to head o un
sanctions against Iran, and its support
for a unilateral declaration of Palestinian
statehood. In Latin America, meanwhile,
Brazil has supported the creation of the
12-member Union of South American
Nations, or unasur, a regional forum
Students and friends of Samuel
P. Huntington (19272009) have
established a prize in the amount of
$10,000 for the best book published
each year in the eld of national
security. The book can be a work
of history or political science, or a
work by a practitioner of statecraft.
The prize will not be awarded if the
Huntington Prize Committee judges
that the submissions in a given year
do not meet the high standards set
by Samuel P. Huntington.
The Huntington Prize Committee is
pleased to solicit nominations for
books published in 2011.
THE
HUNTINGTON
PRIZE
CALL FOR BOOKS
Nominations will be accepted until
31 May 2012.
A letter of nomination and two copies of the book
should be sent to:
Ann Townes
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs
Knafel Building
1737 Cambridge Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
011_r.indd 1 1/24/12 4:19:27 PM
.
Volume 91 No. 2
that pointedly excludes the United States.
Much of the unasur agenda has been
U.S.-oriented, including a presidential
summit devoted to the expansion of U.S.
military basing rights in Colombia and a
meeting of fnance ministers to discuss
the eects of U.S. monetary policy. And
Brazils eorts to engage, rather than
isolate, Bolivian President Evo Morales
and Venezuelan President Chvez, how-
ever defensible on policy grounds, are
also designed to oer a clear alternative to
U.S. attempts at hemispheric leadership.
a better approach
Brazils actions do not constitute a direct
threat to the United States. But they do
represent an emerging challenge to a
number of important U.S. interests. And
since Brazil has 200 million people and
South Americas largest economy, its
status as a regional and global player is
here to stay. To deal with it and other
current challenges in the region, Wash-
ington will have to rethink its attitudes
toward the hemisphere.
The frst step should be acknowledging
that in a diversifying global economy, the
role of the United States in the Western
Hemisphere has shifted from dominance to
preeminence. Whatever ability Washington
might once have had to directly infuence
local domestic politics and policies has
diminished. The second step should be
recognizing that political and economic
liberalization, however important and
desirable they may be, will not by them-
selves assure the advancement of all
the United States national interests in the
region. U.S. policy, in short, needs to be
guided by a cool calculation of Washing-
tons own priorities and its relative ability
to achieve them.
Take economic integration. Today,
facing Asian competition and Brazilian
resistance, the United States needs to make
a major push on regional trade. But it
should do so in a hardheaded, rather
than naive, way, taking into account the
true constellation of regional economic
interests. Leveraging Congress recent
approval of the U.S.-Colombian and
U.S.-Panamanian free-trade agreements,
Washington should move aggressively
to consolidate the welter of free-trade
agreements it currently has into a larger
market. This would do more than just
make good on the long-promised idea of
the ftaa, especially in light of growing
evidence of Chinese exports undermining
Latin American manufacturing; it would
also serve as a rallying point from which
Washington could begin to reassert its
regional economic role and interests.
Linking such an initiative to the recently
negotiatied Trans-Pacifc Partnership,
meanwhile, would allow the United
States to put itself at the forefront of
the promotion of economic ties between
Latin America and Asia, creating the
sort of signifcant incentives necessary
to bring Brazil into the trade fold. Such
a move might also help ease controversy
over trade policy within the United States.
The strategy of negotiating free-trade
agreements one by one and selling each to
a skeptical Congress has run its course; if
any more trade deals are going to be sold
to Congress and the American public in
the near future, they will have to be large
ones that mobilize broad constituencies.
Beyond trade, U.S. policy needs to
shift its focus from internal issues in
small countries to strategic issues involving
larger ones. (The only exception is Mexico,
where internal political issues, including
foreignaffairs
.
security, remain central to U.S. interests.)
In Guatemala, the security situation will
inevitably have human rights implications,
and the political changes in Cuba during
the waning days of the Castro regime will
have historical importance, but these sorts
of policy questions should not be the
prism through which Washington reacts
to the region.
Across the hemisphere, Washington
should focus its attention on balancing
challenges to its leadership and managing
the growing economic and political
rivalries among the regions most impor-
tant players. The United States may no
longer be the only entry point for Brazil
or Mexico onto the global stage, but it
must play a fundamental role in working
with them to recast the g-20, the Inter-
national Monetary Fund, and the un
Security Council in a way that refects
Brazils and Mexicos rise but is also
favorable to U.S. interests. Similarly,
U.S. policymakers should establish tax
and investment treaties with Brazil and
other states that aim to deepen investment
and commerce, which will be especially
important as Chinas economy slows
down. Last, energy cooperation across
borders to tap a diversity of energy sources,
from newly discovered fossil fuels in
Argentina and Brazil to renewables,
would build a powerful motor for eco-
nomic and regulatory integration and
reduce the United States dependence on
the regions more volatile exporters, such
as Venezuela. Part of this eort should
involve working with Brazil to extend
U.S. military security to Brazilian rigs
positioned far o the coast.
As Washington updates its approach
to Latin America, it could use the help
of the regional studies community. For
that to happen, however, regional experts
will need to undergo some soul-searching
of their own. From dependency to democ-
ratization, Latin America has long served
as fertile ground for academic scholarship
and theory building regarding the devel-
oping world. Today, the region is entering
a new phase of its history, one marked
by higher levels of development, intra-
regional rivalries, and an increasing degree
of geopolitical autonomy. It needs to be
addressed with the mindset and tools of
international relations, not just those
of comparative politics.
Chinese Computer Games
Keeping Safe in Cyberspace
Adam Segal
[1 4]
Adam Segal is Ira A. Lipman Senior Fellow for Counterterrorism and
National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.
In March 2011, the U.S. computer
security company rsa announced that
hackers had gained access to security
tokens it produces that let millions of
government and private-sector employees,
including those of defense contractors
such as Lockheed Martin, connect
remotely to their oce computers. Just
fve months later, the antivirus software
company McAfee issued a report claiming
that a group of hackers had broken into
the networks of 71 governments, compa-
nies, and international organizations.
These attacks and the many others like
them have robbed companies and gov-
ernments of priceless intellectual property
and crucial military secrets. And although
ocials have until recently been reluctant
to name the culprit, most experts agree
that the majority of the attacks originated
in China.
In response, analysts and policymakers
have suggested that Washington and
Beijing work toward some form of dtente,
a broad-based agreement about how
countries should behave in cyberspace
that might eventually turn into a more
formal code of conduct. Proponents
argue that the two sides long-term
interests are aligned, that one day China
will be as dependent on digital infra-
structure for economic and military
power as the United States is today. As
Major General Jonathan Shaw, the head
of the British militarys Defence Cyber
Operations Group, has said, Chinas
dependence on cyber is increasing, the
amount of cyber crime taking place inside
that society is huge, and the impact on
their economic growth and their internal
stability is also going to be huge. . . .
Theres more common ground than
people might suggest.
But a grand bargain wont be struck
anytime soon. Both China and the United
States consider operations in cyberspace
a valuable tool, and China currently has
little interest in cracking down on hackers,
who pose a constant threat to its eco-
nomic and military rivals. This doesnt
mean that there is nothing Washington
can do, however. Instead of engaging in
a futile eort to achieve some equivalent
in cyberspace to nuclear dtente, the
06_Segal_pp14_20.indd 14 1/17/12 11:42 AM
foreignaffairs
.
U.S. government should pursue a wide-
ranging approach to protecting American
interests that includes working closely
with other Internet powers and raising
the costs of hacking. Cyberattacks are
less like on-o switches and more like
dials. The goal of U.S. policy should be
to turn them down.
i nternet i deology
Washington and Beijing wont agree to a
broad treaty governing cyberspace mainly
because they hold fundamentally incom-
patible views on the Internet and society.
The U.S. government, in its International
Strategy for Cyberspace, says that it will
promote a digital infrastructure that is
open, interoperable, secure and reliable
while supporting international commerce,
strengthening security, and fostering free
expression. It has championed an approach
to the Internet that lends infuence to
commercial interests and nonstate actors,
opposing calls from other countries for
more authority to be given to state-centric
organizations such as the un or the
International Telecommunication Union.
China, by contrast, regulates the
Internet strictly, and although the coun-
try may share an interest in security and
global commerce, it defnes these concepts
dierently than the United States does.
It is not that China has nothing to fear
from cyberattacks: the country suered
close to 500,000 such attacks in 2011, with
nearly 15 percent of them appearing to
come from computers in the United States.
Yet this vulnerability has not brought the
two sides together: whereas Americans
talk of promoting cybersecurity, a
fairly narrow term that implies protect-
ing communications and other critical
networks, Chinese ocials like to talk
about information security, a much
broader concept that also includes
regulating content.
Chinas stance is a matter of legiti-
macy and political control. Chinese
policymakers, unlike their American
equivalents, fear that communications
technologies could foment instability.
Beijing views attempts by the U.S. State
Department and digital activists to over-
come Internet flters as just as threatening
as hackers trying to penetrate an electric
power grid. Thus, in June 2011, for exam-
ple, responding to reports that the United
States was developing an Internet in a
suitcase and other frewall-circumvention
technologies, an editorial in the state-run
Peoples Daily contended, The U.S. State
Department has carefully framed its
support of such projects as promoting
free speech and human rights, but it is
clear that the policy is aimed at destabi-
lizing national governments.
Chinas obsessive drive for indigenous
innovation explains its opposition to
global standards for both the technologies
that keep the Internet operating and those
that allow dierent types of devices to
communicate online. As Chinese tech-
nology frms expand abroad, they will
need an interoperable Internet as badly
as any other international businesses, and
they would beneft from the economies
of scale and lower prices that global
standards allow. For this reason, the
Chinese computer manufacturer Lenovo
helped found the Digital Living Network
Alliance, a trade group that seeks to
promote interoperability among consumer
electronics. But the Chinese government
views such attempts at unity as an eort to
lock the rest of the world into technology
standards dominated by U.S. companies.
06_Segal_pp14_20.indd 15 1/17/12 11:42 AM
Adam Segal
[16] foreignaffairs
.
Volume 91 No. 2
As part of its plan to reduce its techno-
logical dependence on the West, China
has proposed technology standards of
its own.
chi na s choi ces
In February 2011, weeks after Google
publicly announced that hackers had
tried to steal its sensitive computer codes,
security experts traced the attacks back
to Shanghai Jiao Tong University and a
vocational school in Shandong Province.
Both schools denied any involvement,
and it is possible that their computers
were hijacked by others, but U.S. intel-
ligence ocials claim that 20 groups
associated with the Peoples Liberation
Army and several Chinese universities
are responsible for the majority of the
attacks on Google, rsa, and other U.S.
targets. Attributing responsibility is often
hard. Some hackers drift in and out of
Beijings orbit over time, whereas others
are independent criminals with no links
to the state. Overall, however, much of
the hacking originating in China can be
classifed as government-sponsored or
government-tolerated. Beijing sees such
hacking as a good way to eke out eco-
nomic and military advantagewhich
creates another obstacle in the path of
a U.S.-Chinese agreement.
Chinas motivation in this area is not
mysterious. The government desperately
wants its economy to move up the value
chain, to become a source of innovation
rather than just a producer of cheap goods.
To make that happen, it has employed
the traditional instruments of science
and technology policy, but it has also
relied on industrial espionage directed
at foreign high-tech companies. Hackers
have reportedly targeted the negotiation
strategies, business plans, and fnancial
information of foreign energy and
banking companies, too.
Beijing also tolerates cyberattacks out
of concern for internal stability. In some
cases, the government appears to direct
attacks at its domestic enemies, such as
the Falun Gong movement, whereas in
others, it seems to encourage political
hacking as a sort of release valve for
frustrated citizens. During the late 1990s,
for example, the government called on
patriotic hackers to vandalize U.S.
government Web sites in response to the
U.S. militarys accidental bombing of
the Chinese embassy in Belgrade and the
collision of a U.S. surveillance plane
with a Chinese fghter jet. The Chinese
governments attitude began to shift by
the middle of the next decade, when
prominent editorials and high-profle
arrests signaled that it was starting to
view independent hacking as unwanted
interference in foreign relations.
But Beijing has continued to allow
such hacking during tense times. After
the human rights activist Liu Xiaobo
won the Nobel Peace Prize in October
2010, for example, Chinese hackers defaced
the Nobel organizations Web site, and
after Vietnam asserted sovereignty over
contested islands in June 2011, they
targeted Vietnamese sites. In both cases,
the government turned a blind eye to the
illegal hacking in deference to the popu-
lations nationalist impulses.
Chinas military also fnds value in
cyberattacks, which would be an integral
part of any Chinese military action in the
region. Much of the Chinese open-source
literature on information warfare suggests
that the military, in the event of a confict,
would conduct quick cyberattacks on its
06_Segal_pp14_20.indd 16 1/17/12 11:42 AM
foreignaffairs
.
adversarys command-and-control centers.
Although the Peoples Liberation Army
has recruited some high-profle hackers
and set up cyber-militias at technology
companies, the military would probably
stop short of rallying outside hackers
during a confict, since doing so would
cede control to them over picking targets
and make it dicult to stop escalation.
Cyberattacks also help China send a
message of deterrence: that a limited
regional confict might not stay that way.
Chinese intrusions into U.S. power grids
or other critical infrastructure, especially
when evidence is left behind, act as a
warning that the U.S. homeland may
not be immune to attack in the case
of a confict over Taiwan or the South
China Sea.
playi ng defense
Given the obstacles standing in the way of
a grand bargain, Washington should focus
on improving its defenses, raising the costs
to Chinese hackers, and coop erating with
other Internet powers. The centerpiece of
any comprehensive strategy should be
cooperating with the private sector to
defend the country against computer
attacks, especially when they target intel-
lectual property. The U.S. government
has already begun to make progress in this
area; since May 2011, for example, the
National Security Agency has shared
classifed intelligence on cyberthreats with
20 defense contractors and their Internet
service providers. Although the Pentagon
is considering expanding the project
to even more defense companies and to
critical infra structure sectors, such as
electricity generators and power grids, for
the time being the rest of the U.S. private
sector remains on its own.
This is a problem, since the rash of
successful attacks over the last fve years
suggests that U.S. frms need all the
help they can get against their highly
capable Chinese foes. A mix of govern-
ment regulations and incentives could
push American companies to spend
more on security. But since attackers
will breach defenses anyway, these
companies need to do a better job of
protecting intellectual property and
trade secrets. They should take inven-
tory of all data stored digitally, remove
critical information from vulnerable
servers, limit the time hackers are able
to spend on networks by deploying
eective intrusion systems, and lure
attackers into so-called honeypots,
decoy computers sometimes baited
with fake data.
The United States should also seek
to raise the costs of cyber-espionage
through trade policy. As the defense
consultant James Farwell has argued,
Chinas tight control over the Internet
suggests that it has the ability, and thus
the legal responsibility, to stop attacks
coming from its soil. The United States
could make the case to the World Trade
Organization that Chinese intellectual
property theft violates Chinas wto
obligations. A ruling against Beijing
would allow Washington to label China
a pirate state, collect damages or apply
trade sanctions, and help mobilize
international support for pressure on
China. Even without a wto ruling, the
United States might consider levying
economic sanctions on China and placing
travel restrictions on cyber-spies.
More aggressive measures may be in
order but for now are legally and strate-
gically dicult. The United States
06_Segal_pp14_20.indd 17 1/17/12 11:42 AM
Adam Segal
.
Volume 91 No. 2
strategy in cyberspace has always been
about more than just defense; as Chi-
nese ocials are quick to note, it was
the United States that frst set up a
cyber command and thus, in their view,
militarized cyberspace. Although U.S.
defense ocials have hesitated to talk
about how they would attack other
countries networks, this reticence is
hardly working. (Consider this headline
that ran in the PLA Daily on July 16,
2011: The Oensive Posture of the
U.S. Strategy for Operating in Cyber-
space is Dicult to Conceal.) It is
time to give up the act. Chinese analysts
are no doubt aware that Washington is
planning oensive operations, and they
probably believe that it is behind other
attacksin particular Stuxnet, the
computer worm credited with slowing
down Irans uranium-enrichment
program at its facility in Natanz.
Last March, the Obama administra-
tion considered using cyberattacks to
disable Libyas air defense systems but
chose not to for various legal and
strategic reasons. The legal issues of
responding to Chinese intrusions are
even more complicated, since espionage
does not violate international law and
so does not justify large-scale attacks
in response. In other words, the United
States cannot turn o the lights in
Shanghai because terabytes of data were
stolen in Washington. Self-defense is
allowed, but the authority under which
the U.S. military can exploit foreign
networks in defense of private industry
is unclear.
Now that U.S. intelligence ocials
have identifed the specifc groups
behind some of the attacks the country
has faced, the United States could
target individual computers and per-
sonal or fnancial data. The U.S.
government may have already hired
private companies to conduct oensive
operations in cyberspace. Several
prominent security researchers have
admitted selling previously undiscov-
ered software vulnerabilities known as
zero-days to defense contractors, who
may use these exploits themselves to
penetrate Chinese networks or may
pass them on to U.S. government
agencies. The benefts of contracting
out hacking, however, must be weighed
against the operational and legal issues
that private but government-sponsored
attacks would raise, as well as the
damage they could do to diplomatic
eorts to convince Beijing to rein in its
own patriotic hackers.
creati ng consensus
Even as the U.S. government attempts
to defend itself against Chinese hackers,
it must also work directly with the Chinese
government to try to solve the problem.
It has taken some preliminary steps in
this direction. In May 2011, for the frst
time, the U.S.-China Strategic and
Economic Dialogue included discussions
regarding cyberspace; such issues were
also on the agenda in July when Admiral
Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Sta, met with General Chen
Bingde, chief of the general sta of the
Peoples Liberation Army. U.S and
Chinese ocials, along with experts from
think tanks, have also been privately
discussing these issues in a parallel set
of track-two meetings.
Yet these ocial bilateral discussions
are not expansive enough. Diplomats
should take their cues from the planned
06_Segal_pp14_20.indd 18 1/17/12 11:42 AM
[19]
dialogue on cyberspace between the
United States and Russia, which is to
include discussions about how each
sides military views the Internet and
an eort to establish a hot line that
could be used during a cybersecurity
crisis. Washington and Beijing need to
have a clear communications channel in
case of emergency. To build trust over
the longer term, the two sides should
also discuss some common threats, such
as the potential for terrorist attacks on
power grids.
Negotiations on these topics are
likely to be protracted and held hostage
to the overall state of the U.S.-Chinese
relationship. In the past, military-to-
military discussions have often been
canceled by one side or the other to
signal displeasure. Confdence-building
measures that reduce mutual irritants,
such as a recent joint eort to reduce
junk e-mail, are more likely to be sus-
tainable. In the same vein, as Gu Jian,
the deputy head of network security
for Chinas Ministry of Public Security,
has suggested, the two sides could act
against activity that is illegal in both
countries. For example, they might shut
down Web sites that attempt to trick
users into handing over their bank
account numbers.
Perhaps more promising than these
incipient discussions with China is the
U.S. governments eort to work with
allies and other like-minded countries
to defne international norms about
cyberspace. It is especially important
to fnd common ground with rising
powers such as Brazil, India, Indonesia,
and South Africa. Agreements with
them about acceptable behavior would
ratchet up the pressure on China,
06_Segal_pp14_20_Blues.indd 19 1/26/12 10:28 AM
Inclusive Finance
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Lead essays by Claire Alexandre
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Impact Investing
Issue 6:3 (Summer 2011)
Lead essays by Wayne Silby (Frontier
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a Difference) and by Elizabeth
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MIT Press Journals
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Finding
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innov_FA_skinny_JAN-2012.indd 1 1/12/2012 4:56:28 PM
019_rr.indd 1 1/26/12 11:32:23 AM
Adam Segal
[20] foreignaffairs
.
Volume 91 No. 2
which rarely prefers to remain an inter-
national outlier.
Companies and governments should
also call out China for its hacking crimes
in the hope that this will embarrass the
government into ending them. Google
used this strategy when it announced in
January 2010 that it had been the victim
of sophisticated attacks and would no
longer operate its search engine in China,
as did the U.S. State Department in
April 2011, when it pressed the Chinese
Foreign Ministry about attacks against
a Web site supporting the dissident artist
Ai Weiwei. Naming and shaming, besides
highlighting the fact that Beijing is
violating international norms, may also
embolden those within the Chinese
government who worry that hackings
long-term costsin particular, the
damage it does to relations with Japan,
Europe, and the United Statesout-
weigh its short-term gains.
The U.S. government should also
keep lending a hand to other countries
so that they can fight cybercrime on
their own, especially those developing
countries that lack the relevant exper-
tise. In July 2011, for instance, the State
Department sponsored a conference for
six East African countries on investi-
gating and prosecuting cross-border
cybercrime. If the United States does
not help such governments, China would
be happy to do so. Yet along with its
expertise, Beijing would seek to export
its own attitudes about the Internet,
values that could tempt these govern-
ments to adopt more totalitarian ap-
proaches to cyberspace and join China
at the un in its push to limit the role
of nongovernmental groups in Internet
governance.
Assembling an international con-
sensus on norms about cyberspace,
however, is a strategy that will probably
take a long time to pay o, if it ever
does. There is little the United States
can do to alter Chinas conception of
cyberspace, a vision it is actively promot-
ing abroad. With a growing population
of 500 million Internet users, it is easy
to see why the Chinese believe that the
future of cyberspace belongs to them.
In the meantime, the most pressing tasks
for the United States are to raise the
costs incurred by Chinese hackers and to
improve the security of networks at
home. Yet U.S. ocials should be
realistic: Chinese-based cyberattacks
will not disappear anytime soon.
06_Segal_pp14_20.indd 20 1/17/12 11:42 AM
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This special collection drawn from the archives of Foreign Affairs traces, in real time,
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FA_Clash_Fullpg_FINAL.indd 1 11/30/11 11:51:43 AM
Chinas ambitions in space could
force another Sputnik moment
for the United Statesas long as
politics dont get in the way.
The Case for Space Neil deGrasse Tyson 22
God and Caesar in America David E. Campbell and Robert D. Putnam 34
The Future of U.S.-Chinese Relations Henry A. Kissinger 44
The Arab Spring at One Fouad Ajami 56
Why We Still Need the World Bank Robert B. Zoellick 66
Clear and Present Safety Micah Zenko and Michael A. Cohen 79
The Iraq We Left Behind Ned Parker 94
War Downsized Carter Malkasian and J. Kael Weston 111
The Globalization of Animal Welfare Miyun Park and Peter Singer 122
A Farewell to Fossil Fuels Amory B. Lovins 134
Essays
07_essay_div.indd 21 1/18/12 9:23 AM
The Case for Space
Why We Should Keep Reaching for the Stars
Neil deGrasse Tyson
[22]
Neil deGrasse Tyson is Director of the Hayden Planetarium at
the American Museum of Natural History. His latest book is Space Chron-
icles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier (Norton, 2012), from which this essay
is adapted.
In 2010, U.S. President Barack Obama articulated his vision for the
future of American space exploration, which included an eventual
manned mission to Mars. Such an endeavor would surely cost hun-
dreds of billions of dollarsmaybe even $1 trillion. Whatever the
amount, it would be an expensive undertaking. In the past, only three
motivations have led societies to spend that kind of capital on ambi-
tious, speculative projects: the celebration of a divine or royal power,
the search for proft, and war. Examples of praising power at great
expense include the pyramids in Egypt, the vast terra-cotta army
buried along with the frst emperor of China, and the Taj Mahal in
India. Seeking riches in the New World, the monarchs of Iberia
funded the great voyages of Christopher Columbus and Ferdinand
Magellan. And military incentives spurred the building of the Great
Wall of China, which helped keep the Mongols at bay, and the
Manhattan Project, whose scientists conceived, designed, and built
the frst atomic bomb.
In 1957, the Soviet launch of the worlds frst artifcial satellite,
Sputnik 1, spooked the United States into the space race. A year
later, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (nasa)
was born amid an atmosphere defned by Cold War fears. But for
years to come, the Soviet Union would continue to best the United
08_Tyson_pp22_33.indd 22 1/17/12 1:14 PM
foreign affairs
.
The Case for Space
States in practically every important measure of space achievement,
including the frst space walk, the longest space walk, the frst woman
in space, the frst space station, and the longest time logged in space.
But by defning the Cold War contest as a race to the moon and
nothing else, the United States gave itself permission to ignore the
milestones it missed along the way.
In a speech to a joint session of Congress in May 1961, President
John F. Kennedy announced the Apollo program, famously declar-
ing, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the
goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and
returning him safely to the Earth. These were powerful words,
and they galvanized the nation. But a more revealing passage came
earlier in the speech, when Kennedy refected on the challenge pre-
sented by the Soviets space program: If we are to win the battle that
is now going on around the world between freedom and tyranny, the
dramatic achievements in space which occurred in recent weeks
should have made clear to us all, as did the Sputnik in 1957, the impact
of this adventure on the minds of men everywhere, who are attempting
to make a determination of which road they should take.
Kennedys speech was not simply a call for advancement or
achievement; it was a battle cry against communism. He might have
simply said, Lets go to the moon: what a marvelous place to explore!
But no one would have written the check. And at some point, some-
body has got to write the check.
If the United States commits to the goal of reaching Mars, it will
almost certainly do so in reaction to the progress of other nations
as was the case with nasa, the Apollo program, and the project that
became the International Space Station. For the past decade, I have
joked with colleagues that the United States would land astronauts
on Mars in a year or two if only the Chinese would leak a memo that
revealed plans to build military bases there.
The joke does not seem quite so funny anymore. Last December,
China released an ocial strategy paper describing an ambitious
fve-year plan to advance its space capabilities. According to the paper,
China intends to launch space laboratories, manned spaceship and
space freighters; make breakthroughs in and master space station key
technologies, including astronauts medium-term stay, regenerative
08_Tyson_pp22_33.indd 23 1/17/12 1:14 PM
Neil deGrasse Tyson
[24] foreign affairs
.
Volume 91 No. 2
life support and propellant refueling; conduct space applications to a
certain extent and make technological preparations for the construction
of space stations. A front-page headline in The New York Times
captured the underlying message: Space Plan From China Broadens
Challenge to U.S.
When it comes to its space programs, China is not in the habit of
proering grand but empty visions. Far from it: the country has an
excellent track record of matching promises with achievements.
During a 2002 visit to China as part of my service on a White House
commission, I listened to Chinese ocials speak of putting a man
into space in the near future. Perhaps I was aicted by a case of
American hubris, but it was easy to think that near future meant
decades. Yet 18 months later, in the fall of 2003, Yang Liwei became the
frst Chinese taikonaut, executing 14 orbits of Earth. Five years after
that, Zhai Zhigang took the frst Chinese space walk. Meanwhile, in
January 2007, when China wanted to dispose of a nonfunctioning
weather satellite, the Peoples Liberation Army conducted the countrys
frst surface-to-orbit kinetic kill, destroying the satellite with a
high-speed missilethe frst such action by any country since the
1980s. With each such achievement, China moves one step closer to
becoming an autonomous space power, reaching the level of (and
perhaps even outdistancing) the European Union, Russia, and the
United States, in terms of its commitment and resources.
Chinas latest space proclamations could conceivably produce
another Sputnik moment for the United States, spurring the coun-
try into action after a relatively fallow period in its space eorts. But
in addition to the countrys morbid fscal state, a new obstacle might
stand in the way of a reaction as fervent and productive as that in
Kennedys era: the partisanship that now clouds space exploration.
the poli tics of space
For decades, space exploration stood above party politics. Support
for nasa was not bipartisan; it was nonpartisan. Public support for
nasa, although it has waxed and waned, has generally not been
correlated with the categories that typically divide Americans: liberal
versus conservative, Democratic versus Republican, impoverished
08_Tyson_pp22_33.indd 24 1/17/12 1:14 PM
foreign affairs
.
reuters / scott audette
End of an era: the last U.S. space shuttle launch, Cape Canaveral, Florida, July 8, 2011
versus wealthy, urban versus rural. This political neutrality has been
refected even in nasas locations. As of 2010, the congressional
districts that house nasas ten main sites were represented in the House
by six Republicans and four Democrats. A similar balance existed
in the Senate delegations from the eight states where those sites are
located: eight Republicans and eight Democrats.
But beginning in 2004, nasas immunity from partisanship began
to fade. Following the fatal loss of the Columbia space shuttle orbiter
in 2003, in which seven crew members died, experts, media commen-
tators, and lawmakers began to push for a new vision for nasa. Less
than a year later, President George W. Bush endorsed that goal with
a set of policies known as the Vision for Space Exploration. The plan
called for the completion of the International Space Station and the
retirement of nasas workhorse, the space shuttle, by the end of
the decade. The money saved by ending the shuttle program would
be used to create a new launch architecture that could take Americans
to destinations farther than low-Earth orbit.
08_Tyson_pp22_33.indd 25 1/17/12 1:14 PM
Neil deGrasse Tyson
.
Volume 91 No. 2
In February 2004, I was appointed by Bush to a nine-member
commission whose mandate was to chart an aordable and sustainable
course for implementing the new policy. The plan ultimately received
bipartisan support in Congress. But during the debate over its merits,
party allegiances began to distort and even blind peoples ideas about
space. Some Democrats were quick to criticize the plan on the grounds
that the nation could not aord it, even though the commission was
explicitly charged with keeping costs in check. Others complained
about the plans lack of details, although supportive documents were
freely available from the White House and from nasa. A number of
liberal critics questioned the advisability of spending on space when
the cost of fghting two wars was already draining the Treasury and
the federal government was sidelining other important programs in
favor of tax cuts. They apparently failed to remember that in 1969 the
United States went to the moon while fghting two warsone cold,
one hotduring the most turbulent decade in American history
since the Civil War. A typical response came from former Vermont
Governor Howard Dean, who was then contending for the Democratic
presidential nomination: I happen to think space exploration is
terrifc. Where is the tax increase to pay for it? It is not worth bank-
rupting the country. Writing in The New Yorker, Hendrik Hertzberg
criticized Bushs lack of seriousness about his interplanetary venture
and derided the plans Wal-Mart price tag. Criticisms such as these
revealed a partisan bias I had not previously encountered in two decades
of exposure to space policy.
Since Obama entered oce, Republicans have taken to politicizing
space exploration with no less verve. In a speech at the Kennedy Space
Center on April 15, 2010, Obama put forward a new space policy, which,
among other things, rearmed Bushs plan to retire the space shuttle.
He sketched a hopeful vision for the future, built around the goal of
reaching multiple destinations beyond low-Earth orbit, including
asteroids. Obama even went one step further than Bush, suggesting
that since the United States has already been to the moon, why return
at all? With an advanced launch vehicle, he said, nasa could bypass
the moon altogether and head straight for Mars by the mid-2030s.
Rather than celebrating Obamas ambitions, scores of protesters
lined the causeways surrounding the Kennedy Space Center that day,
08_Tyson_pp22_33.indd 26 1/17/12 1:14 PM
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foreign affairs
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The Case for Space
wielding placards that pleaded with the president not to destroy
nasa. The conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer scoed at
Obamas abdication of the United States leading role in space,
labeling the plan a call to retreat. The Republican governor of
Texas, Rick Perry, accused Obama of leaving American astronauts
with no alternative but to hitchhike into space. Taken at face value,
such reactions to Obamas plan could have refected honest dierences
of opinion. But their partisan nature was revealed by their target:
after all, it was not Obama but Bush who had originally called for
the end of the shuttle program.
Ultimately, the fght over Obamas plan became all about jobs. The
plan left a gap of uncertain length between the phasing out of the
shuttle and new launches beyond low-Earth orbit, meaning that for
some period of time, there would be no need for shuttle workers,
especially the contractors who work with nasa in support of its
launch operations. Since the shuttle is a major part of nasa, and since
nasas industrial partners are spread far and wide across the country,
the unemployment ripples would be felt far beyond Floridas Space
Coast. In his April 2010 speech, the president did promise to fund
retraining programs for workers whose jobs would be eliminated. He
also noted that his plan would erase fewer jobs than Bushs Vision
for Space Exploration, although he spun the dierence by saying,
Despite some reports to the contrary, my plan will add more than
2,500 jobs along the Space Coast in the next two years, compared to
the plan under the previous administration. A mathematically
equivalent but blunter version of that statement would have been,
Bushs plan would have destroyed 10,000 jobs; my plan will destroy
only 7,500.
This emphasis on jobs led the public debate into a rhetorical cul-
de-sac, since few politicians can aord to defend any federal agency,
much less nasa, as a massive government jobs program. So instead
of dwelling on his plans impact on employment, Obama has focused
on space travels historic impact on technology and innovation. In a
rousing speech to the National Academy of Sciences in 2009 to alert
scientists of the coming benefts from the American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act, the president noted that the Apollo program
produced technologies that have improved kidney dialysis and water
08_Tyson_pp22_33.indd 27 1/17/12 1:14 PM
Neil deGrasse Tyson
.
Volume 91 No. 2
purifcation systems; sensors to test for hazardous gases; energy-
saving building materials; and fre-resistant fabrics used by frefghters
and soldiers. And more broadly, the enormous investment of that era
in science and technology, in education and research funding
produced a great outpouring of curiosity and creativity, the benefts
of which have been incalculable. He could have added much more to
that list of revolutionary spino technologies, including digital imag-
ing, implantable pacemakers, collision-avoidance systems on aircraft,
precision lasik eye surgery, and global positioning satellites.
These constitute perfectly reasonable arguments in support of
spending on space. Still, there was something disingenuous about
Obamas rhetoric. The economic stimulus legislation proposed dou-
bling the budgets of the National Science
Foundation, the Department of Energys
Oce of Science, and the National Institute
of Standards and Technology. But although
Obama heaped praise on the legacy of
space research, all that nasa got from the
stimulus act was a directive on how to allo-
cate $1 billion of its existing budgetno
extra funding at all. Given that space ex-
ploration formed the rhetorical soul of the
presidents speech, that absence of additional dollars defed rational,
political, and even emotional analysis.
In his second State of the Union address, delivered in January 2011,
Obama once again cited the space race as a catalyst for scientifc and
technological innovation. He then noted the hefty investments that
other countries are now making in their technological future and the
fact that the U.S. educational system is falling behind, declaring
these disturbing imbalances to be this generations Sputnik moment.
He laid out four goals: to have a million electric vehicles on the road
and to deploy the next generation of high-speed wireless Internet
service to 98 percent of all Americans by 2015 and to derive 80 percent
of U.S. electricity from clean energy and to provide 80 percent of
Americans with access to high-speed rail by 2035.
Those are all laudable goals. But to think of that list as the future
fruits of a contemporary Sputnik moment is dispiriting to proponents
Countless women are
alive today because of
eorts to fx a design
faw in the Hubble
Space Telescope.
08_Tyson_pp22_33.indd 28 1/17/12 1:14 PM
foreign affairs
.
The Case for Space
of space exploration. It reveals a change of vision over the decades,
from dreams of tomorrow to dreams of technologies that should
already exist.
There is also a deeper faw in Obamas plan. In a democracy, a
president who articulates a goal with a date of completion far beyond
the end of his term cannot oer a guarantee of ever reaching that
goal. Kennedy knew full well what he was doing in 1961 when he set
out to land a man on the moon before this decade is out. Had he
lived and been elected to a second term, he would have been president
through January 19, 1969. And had the 1967 Apollo 1 launch-pad fre
that killed three astronauts not occurred, the Apollo program would
not have been delayed and the United States would certainly have
reached the moon under Kennedys watch. Now, imagine if in 1961,
Kennedy had instead called for achieving the goal by sometime in
the 1980s. With a mission statement like that, it is not clear whether
American astronauts would have ever left Earth. But that is essentially
what Obama has done by calling for a mission to Mars by the mid-2030s.
When a president promises something beyond his years in oce, he
is fundamentally unaccountable. It is not his budget that must fnish
the job. Another president inherits the problem, and it becomes a
ball too easily dropped, a plan too easily abandoned, a dream too
readily deferred. So although the rhetoric of Obamas space speech
was stirring and visionary, the politics of his speech were, empirically,
a disaster. The only thing guaranteed to happen on his watch is the
interruption of the United States access to space.
the lessons of hubble
The partisanship surrounding space exploration and the retrench-
ing of U.S. space policy are part of a more general trend: the decline
of science in the United States. As its interest in science wanes, the
country loses ground to the rest of the industrialized world in every
measure of technological profciency. For example, in recent decades,
the rate of U.S. submissions to peer-reviewed science journals has
dropped or barely held steady, while the rates of submissions from
Brazil, China, Japan, and western Europe have risen sharply. Data
on graduate-level education tell a similar story. According to the latest
08_Tyson_pp22_33.indd 29 1/17/12 1:14 PM
Neil deGrasse Tyson
.
Volume 91 No. 2
available annual census by the National Science Foundation, nearly
one-third of the graduate students in science and engineering felds in
the United States and more than half of the postdoctoral researchers
in those felds are foreign nationals studying or working in the country
on temporary visas. Moreover, those numbers partly cloak the fact
that in some of the nations best engineering departments, almost all
the students are foreign nationals.
Until recently, most of those students came to the United States,
earned their degrees, and gladly stayed for employment in the U.S.
high-tech work force. Now, however, department chairs are anecdotally
reporting that foreign nationals in their graduate programs are choosing
to return home more frequently, owing to a combination of widespread
anti-immigrant sentiment and increased professional opportunities
in China, India, and eastern Europethe places whose citizens are the
most highly represented in advanced academic science and engineering
programs in the United States. This is not a brain drain, because the
United States never laid claim to these students in the frst place, but
a kind of brain regression. Thus, what is bad for America is good for
the world. In the next phase of this shift, the United States should
expect to begin losing the talent that trains the talent, which would
be a disaster. Ever since the Industrial Revolution, investments in
science and technology have proved to be reliable engines of economic
growth. If homegrown interest in those felds is not regenerated
soon, the comfortable lifestyle to which Americans have become ac-
customed will draw to a rapid close.
Nevertheless, there are still reasons to be hopeful. One of the most
popular museums in the world, with attendance levels rivaling those
of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Uzi, and the Louvre, is
the National Air and Space Museum, in Washington, D.C. Some
of its visitors are, of course, foreign tourists. But Americans contin-
ued interest in exhibits such as the Wright brothers original 1903
airplane and the Apollo 11 moon capsule refects the way that an
enduring emotional investment in space exploration has become part
of American culture.
Or consider the fate of the Hubble Space Telescope. Hubbles
scientifc legacy is unimpeachable. Its data have been used in more
published research papers than data from any other single scientifc
08_Tyson_pp22_33.indd 30 1/17/12 1:14 PM
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foreign affairs
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March / April 2012 [31 ]
The Case for Space
instrument, in any discipline. Among the highlights of Hubbles
achievements is the way it helped settle a decades-old debate about
the age of the known universe (now agreed to be about 14 billion
years). Yet in 2004, when nasa announced plans to cancel an upcom-
ing mission to service Hubble, owing to a lack of funds and the risks
inherent in using an aging shuttle feet, the loudest voices of dissent
were not those of scientists but rather those of everyday Americans.
Hubble is the frst and only space telescope to observe the universe
using primarily visible light. Its crisp, vibrant, and detailed images of
the cosmos make it a kind of supreme version of human eyes in
space. No matter what Hubble revealsplanets, dense star felds,
colorful interstellar nebulae, deadly black holes, gracefully colliding
galaxieseach image opens up a private vista of the cosmos. Hubble
came of age in the 1990s, during the exponential growth in access to
the Internet. Soon, Hubble images, each more magnifcent than the
last, became screen savers and desktop wallpaper on the computers
of people who had never before found reason to celebrate, however
quietly, Earths place in the universe. Those gorgeous images made
Americans feel that they were participants in cosmic discovery. And
so, when the source of those images was threatened, there followed a
torrent of letters to the editor, online comments, and phone calls to
Congress, all urging nasa to restore Hubbles funding. I do not know
of any previous point in the history of science when the public took
ownership of a scientifc instrument. The largely unorganized cam-
paign to save Hubble succeeded: the decision was reversed, and the
funding was restored.
Hubble oers another lesson about the value of space exploration.
When it was launched in 1990, a faw in the design of its optics system
produced hopelessly blurry images, much to nasas dismay. Three
years later, corrective optics were installed. But during the intervening
time, astrophysicists at Baltimores Space Telescope Science Institute,
the research headquarters for Hubble, continued collecting the murky
data and also worked to design advanced image-processing software
to help identify and isolate stars in the telescopes otherwise crowded,
unfocused images. Meanwhile, in collaboration with Hubble scientists,
medical researchers at the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center at
Georgetown University Medical Center recognized that the challenge
08_Tyson_pp22_33.indd 31 1/17/12 1:14 PM
Neil deGrasse Tyson
.
Volume 91 No. 2
faced by the astrophysicists was similar to that faced by doctors in their
visual search for tumors in mammograms. With the help of funding
from the National Science Foundation, the Lombardi researchers
adapted the techniques that the Hubble scientists were using to analyze
the telescopes blurry images and applied them to mammography,
leading to signifcant advances in the early detection of breast cancer.
Countless women are alive today because of eorts to fx a design
faw in the Hubble Space Telescope.
planni ng for tomorrow
One cannot script those kinds of outcomes, yet similar serendipi-
tous scenarios occur continually. The cross-pollination of disciplines
almost always stimulates innovation. Clearly defned, goal-oriented
support for specifc outcomes in specifc felds may yield evolutionary
advances, but cross-pollination involving a diversity of sciences much
more readily encourages revolutionary discoveries. And nothing spurs
cross-pollination like space exploration, which draws from the ranks
of astrophysicists, biologists, chemists, engineers, planetary geologists,
and subspecialists in those felds. Without healthy federal support for
the space program, ambitions calcify, and the economy that once thrived
on a culture of innovation retreats from the world stage.
Other good reasons abound for supporting space science. Humans
should search Mars and fnd out why liquid water no longer runs on its
surface; something bad happened there, and it would be important
to identify any signs of something similar happening on Earth. We
should visit an asteroid and learn how to defect itafter all, if we
discover one heading toward Earth, it would be rather embarrassing
if big-brained, opposable-thumbed humans were to meet the same fate
as the pea-brained dinosaurs. We should drill through the miles of ice
on Jupiters frozen moon Europa and explore the liquid ocean below for
living organisms. We should visit Pluto and other icy bodies in the outer
solar system, because they hold clues to the origin of our planet. And we
should probe Venus thick atmosphere to understand why the green-
house eect has gone awry there, raising surface temperatures to 500
degrees Celsius. No part of the solar system should be beyond our reach,
and no part of the universe should hide from our telescopes.
08_Tyson_pp22_33.indd 32 1/17/12 1:14 PM
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The Case for Space
What the Bush plan and the Obama plan have in common, apart
from having exposed partisan divides, is an absence of funding to
bring their visions closer to the present, let alone an unspecifed future.
In the current economic and political climate, it might be dicult to
imagine much support for a renewed commitment to space explora-
tioneven in the face of a direct challenge from China. Many will
ask, Why are we spending billion of dollars up there in space when
we have pressing problems down here on Earth? That question
should be replaced by a more illuminating one: As a fraction of one
of my tax dollars today, what is the total cost of all U.S. spaceborne
telescopes and planetary probes, the rovers on Mars, the International
Space Station, the recently terminated space shuttle, telescopes yet to
orbit, and missions yet to fy? The answer is one-half of one penny.
During the storied Apollo era, peak nasa spending (in 196566)
amounted to a bit more than four cents on the tax dollar. If the United
States restored funding for nasa to even a quarter of that levela
penny on the tax dollarthe country could reclaim its preeminence
in a feld that shaped its twentieth-century ascendancy.
Even in troubled economic times, the United States is a suciently
wealthy nation to embrace an investment in its own future in a way that
would drive the economy, the countrys collective ambitions, and,
above all, the dreams of coming generations. Imagine the excitement
when nasa, bolstered by a fully funded long-term plan, starts to select
the frst astronauts to walk on Mars. Right now, those science-savvy
future explorers are in middle school. As they become celebrities whom
others seek to emulate, the United States will once again witness how
space ambitions can shape the destiny of nations.
08_Tyson_pp22_33.indd 33 1/17/12 1:14 PM
Why Mixing Religion and Politics Is Bad for Both
David E. Campbell and Robert D. Putnam
David E. Campbell is John Cardinal OHara, C.S.C. Associate
Professor of Political Science and Director of the Rooney Center for
the Study of American Democracy at the University of Notre Dame.
Robert D. Putnam is Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public
Policy at Harvard University. This essay is adapted from the paperback
edition of their book, American Grace (Simon & Schuster, 2012).
[34]
From the day the Pilgrims stepped o the Mayfower, religion has
played a prominent role in American public life. The faithful have
been vital participants in nearly every major social movement in U.S.
history, progressive as well as conservative. Still, the close intertwining
of religion and politics in the last 40 years is unusual, especially in
the degree of the politicization of religion itself. Indeed, religions
infuence on U.S. politics has hit a high-water mark, especially on
the right. Yet at the same time, its role in Americans personal lives
is ebbing. As religion and politics have become entangled, many
Americans, especially younger ones, have pulled away from religion.
And that correlation turns out to be causal, not coincidental.
It is no surprise that religion and politics should be connected to
some degree in a highly religious and democratic nation. In the nine-
teenth century, U.S. political parties were divided along sectarian lines:
pietistic versus liturgical, low church versus high church, Protestant
versus Catholic. But whereas the past saw partisans of dierent religions
(often with an ethnic tinge) face o in the political arena, today partisan
divisions are not defned by denomination; rather, they pit religiously
09_Putnam_pp34_43.indd 34 1/17/12 1:18 PM
foreign affairs
.
devout conservatives against secular progressives. Moreover, to a degree
not seen since at least the 1850s (and perhaps not even then), religious
mobilization is now tied directly to party politics.
In fact, over the last 20 years, church attendance has become the main
dividing line between Republican and Democratic voters. (African
Americans are a sharp, but singular, exception; although most Democratic
voters are now secular, African Americans, the most loyal Democrats, are
also the most religious group in the United States.) The so-called God
gap, between churchgoing Republicans and secular white Democrats,
rose sharply throughout the 1990s and early years of this century. Before
the 2008 presidential election, one team of consultants even specialized in
teaching Democratic candidates how to do God, so they could eat into
the Republicans support among religious Americans. Yet in 2008, the
God gap remained as wide as ever: according to data we collected, among
whites, 67 percent of weekly churchgoers voted for Senator John McCain,
as compared with 26 percent of those who never attended church.
The connection between religiosity and political conservatism has
become so deeply embedded in contemporary U.S. culture that it is star-
tling to recall just how new the alignment is. In the 1960s, churchgoers
were actually more likely than nonchurchgoers to be Democrats. Into
the 1980s, there were still plenty of progressives in the pews on Sunday
morning and plenty of conservatives who stayed home. The rather sud-
den shift since then has, and will have, both short-term and long-term
implications for both politics and religion. For now, Republicans must
seek to appease their fervently religious base without alienating a gen-
eral electorate that increasingly fnds the mixture of religion and politics
distasteful. In the long run, the trend could undermine the historic role
of religion in the United States, as younger generations reject orga-
nized religion itself. The country has arrived at todays close nexus
between religion and partisanship only recently, and understanding how
it got thereand how the role of religion in the United States has
changed in recent decadeswill help explain where it might be headed.
i n the begi nni ng
To get a better sense of how novel the present political-religious land-
scape is, we must go back to the 1950s. That decade was highly religious;
09_Putnam_pp34_43.indd 35 1/17/12 1:18 PM
.
Volume 91 No. 2
indeed, some historians argue that it was the most religious in all of
American history. Of course, there are many ways to gauge national
trends in religiosity, but for decades, one Gallup poll question, Is reli-
gions infuence on American life increasing or decreasing? has proved
a fnely tuned seismometer of religious tremors. In 1957, 69 per-
cent of those Americans surveyed told Gallup that they thought
the infuence of religion in American life was on the rise. Only 14 per-
cent said it was declining. Every objective measure indicates that
they were right: more Americans than ever were attending religious
services, more churches were being built to accommodate them, and
more books of Scripture were being sold and read. But in President
Dwight Eisenhowers America, religion had no partisan overtones.
Ike was as popular among those who never darkened the door of a
church (or synagogue, and so on) as among churchgoers.
Then came the 1960s, and a dramatic turn in attitudes toward
authority and especially toward conventional sexual morality, an issue
tightly connected to religious belief. In just four years, between 1969
and 1973, the percentage of Americans who approved of premarital
sex doubled, from one-fourth to one-half. That increase was stunning
and almost entirely concentrated among the baby boomers, who were
then coming of age. By 1970, fully 75 percent of Americans surveyed
concluded that religions infuence in American life was waning.
Collapsing church attendance confrmed their view. Yet even then,
religiosity did not skew more to the right than the left; neither during
the religious boom of the 1950s nor in the religious bust of the 1960s
was religion linked to partisan politics.
Nor did the 1960s put the United States on an inexorable path
toward secularism. Far from it: instead, among more conservative
Americans, the moral earthquake triggered a return to religion, or at
least a particular type of religion. Beginning in the mid-1970s, in an
aftershock to the 1960s, conservative forms of religion, especially
evangelical Protestantism, expanded. At the same time as liberal
Protestantism and churchgoing Catholicism were virtually collapsing,
many Americans who sought a rearmation of traditional norms,
especially when it came to sex and family values, found what they
were looking for in evangelical Protestantism. The new evangelicals
also broke free of the self-imposed cultural exile of their fundamentalist
09_Putnam_pp34_43.indd 36 1/17/12 1:18 PM
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.
forebears. They did not shun a sinful world but instead sought to
change it, including its politics.
An early harbinger of evangelicalisms new political role was the
1976 presidential campaign of the Democrat Jimmy Carter, who
spoke openly of himself as a born-again Christian, a label once
unthinkable in mainstream U.S. politics. At the other end of the
political spectrum, meanwhile, moral conservatives banded together
to fght the Equal Rights Amendment, gay rights, and abortion.
Evangelicalism began morphing from a purely religious movement
into a political one that allied devout Americans from many denom-
inations, including Catholics and Mormons. Once more, Gallups
seismometer noted the increasing prominence of religion. In 1976, it
registered that 44 percent of respondents thought religion was gain-
ing infuence, and 45 percent thought it was losing infuence.
Then, in his 1980 presidential campaign, the Republican Ronald
Reagan actively courted the religious vote with considerable success.
Unlike Eisenhower in the 1950s or even Presidents Richard Nixon
and Gerald Ford in the 1970s, Reagan and the Republican presidential
candidates that followed him began to pick up the support of for-
merly Democratic evangelicals in the South and observant Catholics
in the North.
The frst aftershock to the 1960s thus had two components: one
religious (the rise of evangelicals) and the other political (the rise of
the religious right). The political movement continues, but the reli-
gious dimension ended in the early 1990s. As a fraction of the total
population (and, even more dramatically, as a fraction of Americans
under 30), the number of evangelicals has been declining for nearly
20 years and is back to where it was at the beginning of the 1970s.
Although many of the political organizations associated with the
religious right, such as the Moral Majority and the Christian Coali-
tion, have disappeared or faded into near irrelevance, their legacy
remains strong: a Republican activist base that advocates both moral
traditionalism and a greater role for religion in the public square.
The rise of the religious right echoes in some respects a common
theme in U.S. history. Most major social movements, both progres-
sive and conservative, have included important religious themes: the
right to life and family values today, abolitionism and prohibition
09_Putnam_pp34_43.indd 37 1/17/12 1:18 PM
.
Volume 91 No. 2
yesterday. But todays unusually intimate ties between organized religion
and one particular political party have had unintended consequences
for both politics and religion.
the god-gi ven right
With the rise of the religious right came the much-discussed God
gap between Republicans and Democrats. Each year, fewer and fewer
Americans identify as secular Republicans or religious Democrats.
What happened to those who once did? Did they adjust their politics
to ft their religion, or vice versa? Surprisingly, politics has mostly
determined religious practice. Formerly religious Democrats (except
among African Americans) have drifted away from church, and
formerly unobservant Republicans have found religion.
Take the Tea Party. Even this ostensibly secular movement has strong
religious undertones. A large, nationally representative survey that we
frst conducted in 2006 (before the Tea Party was formed) and repeated
with the same respondents in 2011 casts doubt on the conventional wis-
dom about the movements origin. In its early days, the Tea Party was
often described as comprising nonpartisan political neophytes who, hurt
by the Great Recession, had been spurred into action out of concern
over runaway government spending. This is a triple myth. In reality,
those Americans who support the Tea Party were (and remain) over-
whelmingly partisan Republicans. They were politically active even in
the preTea Party days, and they were no more likely than anyone else
to have suered hardship during the recent economic downturn.
Indeed, it turns out that the strongest predictor of a Republican
becoming a Tea Party supporter is whether he or she evinced a desire
in our 2006 survey to see religion play a prominent role in politics.
And that desire does not simply refect members high religiosity.
Tea Partiers are, on average, more religiously observant than the
typical American, but not more so than other Republicans. Rather,
they are distinctively comfortable blending religion and politics. Tea
Partiers are more likely than other Republicans to say that U.S. laws
and policies would be better if the country had more deeply religious
elected ocials, that it is appropriate for religious leaders to engage
in political persuasion, and that religion should be brought into public
09_Putnam_pp34_43.indd 38 1/17/12 1:18 PM
foreign affairs
.
debates over political issues. The Tea Partys generals might say that
their overriding concern is smaller government, but the rank and fle
is after a godlier government.
Tea Partiers views in this respect are increasingly out of step with
those of most Americans. According to Gallup polls, as early as 1984,
just as the alliance between religious and political conservatives was
crystallizing, most Americans opposed the idea of religious groups
09_Putnam_pp34_43.indd 39 1/17/12 1:18 PM
.
Volume 91 No. 2
campaigning against specifc candidates. Moreover, according to the
widely respected national General Social Survey, as the public visibil-
ity of the religious right increased between 1991 and 2008, growing
numbers of Americans expressed the conviction that religious leaders
should not try to infuence peoples votes or government decisions. In
1991, 22 percent of those surveyed said they strongly agree that reli-
gious leaders should not try to infuence government decisions; by
2008, that fgure had nearly doubled, to 38 percent. In our 2011 survey,
80 percent of respondents said that it is not proper for religious leaders
to tell people how to vote, and 70 percent said that religion should be
kept out of public debates over social and political issues.
It should thus come as no surprise that many Americans have neg-
ative views of the Tea Party. In the same 2011 poll, the Tea Party ranked
at the bottom of a list of two dozen U.S. religious, political, and racial
groups in terms of favorability. (It was even less liked than Muslims
and atheists, two groups that regularly meet with public opprobrium.)
One of the few groups approaching the unpopularity of the Tea Party
was the religious right. Both movements (which overlap heavily)
might have won the staunch support of a minority of American voters,
but they have also won the staunch opposition of a much larger group.
This shift has created a dilemma for Republican candidates seeking
the Tea Partiers support. Not only must Republicans toe the conserva-
tive line on fscal issues, immigration, and national security, but Tea
Party sympathizers (who compose barely a quarter of the national elec-
torate but more than half of the Republican primary electorate) also
expect them to favor a fusion of religion and politics. The problem for
the Republican Party is that this fusion is unpopular among the general
electorate and is becoming more so. Thus, as culture warriors fre up the
Republican base, they leave independent voters cold. In contrast, more
centrist candidates are attractive to the moderate middle but win only
tepid support among the activists who want more God in government.
losi ng my religion
The consequences of the melding of religion and party politics
extend beyond electoral politics; the commingling has also reshaped
the United States religious landscape. Just as the 1960s spurred a re-
09_Putnam_pp34_43.indd 40 1/17/12 1:18 PM
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vival of traditional religion, the last few decades have led directly to an
unprecedented turning away from organized religion, especially among
younger Americans.
Consider the growth in the number of people whom sociologists
call nones, those who report no religious aliation. Historically, this
category made up a constant 57 percent of the American population,
even during the 1960s, when religious attendance dropped. In the early
1990s, however, just as the God gap widened in politics, the percentage
of nones began to shoot up. By the mid-1990s, nones made up 12 per-
cent of the population. By 2011, they were 19 percent. In demographic
terms, this shift was huge. To put the fgures in context, in the two
decades between the early 1970s and the early 1990s, the heyday of
evangelicalism, the fraction of the population that was evangelical grew
by only about fve percentage points. The percentage of nones grew twice
as much in the last two decades and is still climbing. Moreover, the rise
is heavily concentrated among people under 30, the so-called millennial
generation. To be sure, the young are always less religiously observant
than their elders; people tend to become more religious when they
get married, have children, and put down roots in a community
(demographers call this the life-cycle eect). Yet 20-somethings in
2012 are much more likely to reject all religious aliation than their
parents and grandparents were when they were young33 percent
today, compared with 12 percent in the 1970s.
The millennials movement away from organized religion has re-
cently accelerated. Between 2006 and 2011, the fraction of nones in
the population as a whole rose modestly, from 17 percent to 19 percent.
Among younger Americans, however, the fraction increased approx-
imately fve times as much. Similarly, over the same fve-year period,
the fraction of Americans who reported never attending religious
services rose by a negligible two percentage points among Americans
over the age of 60 but by three times as much among those 1829.
And younger millennials are even more secular than their slightly
older siblings; our 2011 survey showed that a third of Americans in
their early 20s were without religion, compared with a quarter of those
who were that age when we surveyed them in 2006.
The Gallup religious seismometer has signaled a plunge in reli-
gions infuence in American life, too. And in our survey, Americans
09_Putnam_pp34_43.indd 41 1/17/12 1:18 PM
.
Volume 91 No. 2
of all walks of life, religious and secular, white and nonwhite, rich
and poor, urban and rural, liberal and conservative, old and young,
highly educated and less educated, reported the shift in about equal
measure. Since we interviewed the very same people in 2006 and
2011, we can even see large numbers of individuals lowering their
own estimates of religions role in American life.
The best evidence indicates that this dramatic generational shift
is primarily in reaction to the religious right. Politically moderate
and progressive Americans have a general allergy to the mingling of
religion and party politics. And millennials are even more sensitive
to it, partly because many of them are liberal (especially on the touch-
stone issue of gay rights) and partly because they have only known a
world in which religion and the right are intertwined. To them, re-
ligion means Republican, intolerant, and homophobic. Since
those traits do not represent their views, they do not see them-
selvesor wish to be seen by their peersas religious.
Our data support this theory. By tracking individuals for fve years,
between 2006 and 2011, we found that Democrats and progressives were
much more likely to become nones than were Republicans. The religious
defections were concentrated specifcally among those Americans who
reported the greatest discomfort with religion-infused politics, regardless
of their own partisan loyalties. In eect, Americans (especially young
Americans) who might otherwise attend religious services are saying,
Well, if religion is just about conservative politics, then Im outta here.
These data point to a rich irony about the emergence of the reli-
gious right. Its founders intended to bolster religions place in the
public square. In a sense, they have succeeded. Yet at the same time,
in a classic demonstration of the danger of unintended consequences,
the movement has pushed a growing share of the population to opt
out of religion altogether.
for god s sake
American religious groups have historically been distinctive in
their adaptability and self-correcting tendencies. Rather than signaling
the certain death of religion, our 2011 nationwide survey found hints
that, feeling the heat from their too close association with partisan
09_Putnam_pp34_43.indd 42 1/17/12 1:18 PM
foreign affairs
.
politics, religious leaders are beginning to pull back. Indeed, one of the
most signifcant dierences between our 2006 and our 2011 data was
the drop-o in political activity within U.S. religious congregations. In
2006, 32 percent of Americans who belonged to a congregation reported
hearing sermons with political content once every month or two or
several times a month. By 2011, that fgure had fallen to 19 percent. The
trend held among those of all religious traditions, in all regions of the
country, among conservatives and liberals, young and old, and urban
and rural. Presumably, clergy across the country have sensed what we see
in the data, namely, Americans growing aversion to blurring the lines
between God and Caesar. So they have opted to stick to God.
The decrease in politicking from the pulpit will likely not have an
immediate eect on the God gap. The chasm has become a fxture of
the U.S. party system and is likely to persist in the short term, barring
a sweeping political realignment. However, if clergy continue to re-
treat from politics, candidates of the religious right will have fewer
opportunities to tap into church-based social networks for political
mobilization. And if Republicans continue their exclusive alignment
with organized religion, they will encounter ever more resistance from
moderate voters, especially in the younger generation, who are in their
politically formative years now and will be around for a long time.
Future historians may well see the last third of the twentieth cen-
tury as an anomaly, a period in which religion and public life in the
United States became too partisan for the good of either. Republican
politicians facing the loss of the religiously moderate middle and
pastors seeing a rapid graying of their dwindling fock are both pay-
ing a belated but serious price for the religious rights dip into politics.
Beyond that, all sidesprogressive and conservative, religious and
secularshould be concerned that placing a partisan label on religion
has hurt the ability of religious leaders to summon moral arguments on
behalf of causes that transcend left and right. Martin Luther King, Jr.s
prophetic call for racial justice was persuasive in part because his
words and deeds drew on powerful religious symbolism that could
not be reduced to base partisanship. Indeed, religion has historically
inspired change across the U.S. political spectrum. American public
discourseand the country at largewill be impoverished if religion
is reduced to a mere force for partisan mobilization.
09_Putnam_pp34_43.indd 43 1/17/12 1:18 PM
iechtenstein may be many things to many people; to some it is a financial
center that seems as secretive as it is successful, and to others it may
just seem like a very small country landlocked within Europes Alpine
mountain range.
However, the country is much more than either of those opinions: it is a coun-
try that can boast more registered companies than citizensthanks to its highly
industrialized free-enterprise economy. It is a country that can also claim the second-
highest GDP per capita in the world and the worlds second-lowest unemployment
rate. Liechtenstein also has the luxury of being the worlds least indebted nation.
The principality has not achieved these accolades by being a shelter for the rich and
privileged; quite the contrary. Successive governments have fought hard to turn the
economy into a slick, competitive, and globally focused machine. Some observers may
say that being only 62 square miles in sizeabout the size of Washington, DCand
having a population of just 36,000 are reasons why Liechtenstein might be so success-
ful. But on the other hand, it could be argued that such a small nation might have a hard
time standing alone and achieving industrial success. It is only because of the economic
policies in place and the strength of its industrial base that Liechtenstein has flourished.
Commercially speaking, this means that many Americans buy or use products that
come from Liechtenstein, making for a viable commercial relationship between the
United States and the principality. The two countries also work closely together on
financial matters and law enforcement, which further demonstrates important close
political cooperation.
L
Prime Minister Dr. Klaus Tschtscher is very clear on why the relationship works.
We signed a law enforcement treaty on joint operations to combat money laundering
back in 2002. This was the first treaty we signed with the U.S. and it was then followed
by the Tax Information Exchange Agreement in 2008, he explained, adding that, the
agreements define the quality of the relationship between us as we can be seen to be
working together. These agreements do not only exist on paper, but also in practice.
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Economic Affairs Dr. Martin Meyer added
to the plaudits of the strength of the relationship when he spoke about the common
interest the two nations have in combating illegal banking activities and money laun-
dering. The diplomatic relationship between Liechtenstein and the United States is,
and has always been, a good one. We work very closely together in the United Nations
on matters of human rights and in the common fight against terrorism. In this respect
we share the same goals, he explained. As Liechtensteins ambassador to the United
States, Claudia Fritsche, pointed out, In the past four years, Liechtenstein has signed
twenty TIEAs and seven double-taxation agreements.
The deputy prime minister touched on another important point: From an eco-
nomic perspective, we are very interested in a close partnership with the U.S. If
you are under the impression that Liechtenstein is solely a financial center, then this
comment might surprise you. But when you take into consideration that the financial
sector makes up only 33 percent of GDP, while almost 40 percent of GDP is generated
by the industrial sector and, more importantly, industrial exports, then you begin to
understand the importance of the U.S. market.
After Switzerland and Germany, the most important export market for Liechten-
steins products is the United States, and according to the general manager of Liech-
tensteins Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Josef Beck, if you take into account
only the principalitys largest companies, then the United States becomes its foremost
export destination.
Our relationship with the U.S. is vitally important, Mr. Beck explained, adding
that during the past decade, Liechtensteins industrialists and members of the U.S.
Congress have been encouraged to meet for roundtable discussions. We started to
invite congressional delegations to Liechtenstein and we also started a biennial Day
in Washington to present what we have to offer, Beck added.
The ambassador explained that the relationship will continue to develop. We in-
tend to move forward on several fronts to deepen the relationship. We have already
established the Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination at Princeton University.
We also hope to increase academic exchange programsnot only to inform Ameri-
cans about Liechtenstein, but also to increase our understanding of what America is,
and thus build on what is already a positive relationship, Fritsche said.
Liechtenstein
A Global Village
Spotlight on Liechtensteins relationship
with the United States
ach year Liechtenstein exports over
$500 million annually to the United
States, which is no mean feat for
the small principality. Liechtensteins
companies also employ more than 3,500 workers
in the United States. These companies that do busi-
ness with the worlds largest economy are both well-
known household names and some lesser known
high-tech manufacturers that U.S. industry relies on.
The principality also understood early on the
value of reinvestment and research and development
(R&D) for industrial growth. Staggeringly, almost 32
percent of Liechtensteins revenues are reinvested
in R&D, making the industrial innovation and develop-
ment sector a strong driving force of the economy.
This policy of reinvestment and innovation has
ensured that high-tech exports have been the se-
cret success of the economy in recent years. Many
of Liechtensteins companies operate within inter-
nationally sought-after niche markets, and many of
these companies are among the worlds elite.
This is a long way from the parlous state of the
principality seventy years ago, which ensured that
the principality had to turn entrepreneurship into
an art form and then guarantee its own prosperity
by carving out a production line of niche products.
One example is Liechtensteins premier manu-
facturer of innovative electrical and electronic
interconnection products and systems. Founded
as a two-man operation in 1975, Neutrik has
emerged as a world leader in the design, manufac-
ture, and marketing of audio, coaxial, power, and
circular connectors. The company now leads the
way in the professional audio market.
Committed to excellence and innovation, the
Neutrik Group now has subsidiaries in the United
States, Great Britain, France, Germany, and China
and has exclusive distributors in more than eighty
countries worldwide. CEO Werner Bachman was
the companys second employee when he started,
and he confirmed the reason behind the companys
success: From the very day I started work here,
innovation and quality were our priorities, he said.
LIECHTENSTEIN
Developing a modern, high-tech and sophistcated
manufacturing future
Given the very nature of their products,
the company had to look abroad to create a
market large enough to make their business
worthwhile. Curiously, Neutriks first customer
was in Georgetown, Connecticut. However, our
products have reached into the very heart of
the United States, as we now supply the U.S.
Capitol, added Bachman.
Their innovation and quality has led to the
brand becoming confused with the product.
Across the world, customers do not ask for
this-or-that connecter; they ask for this-or-that
Neutrik. That is not a surprise when you consider
that 50 percent of the worlds professional audio
systems are connected with Neutriks products.
Another company that mirrors the principal-
itys success is ThyssenKrupp Presta, the prin-
cipalitys second-largest employer. Belonging
to Germanys ThyssenKrupp Automotive, one
of the worlds largest automobile suppliers, its
research center and headquarters is in Eschen,
Liechtenstein. Presta is the world market leader
in assembled camshafts, and it develops innova-
tive steering systems for almost all of the worlds
most significant automobile manufacturers.
As recently as 1985, the company had no
steering business, yet it now has 25 percent
market share of the worldwide steering column
business. The companys CEO, Guido Durrer,
pointed out just how far Presta has come in
the past two decades: We supply most of the
steering columns for Ford and a large pro-
portion of the columns used by Chrysler. He
added that this shows the importance of the
Liechtenstein-U.S. relationship, saying, We are
a very industrialized country, yet for some rea-
son we are thought of only as a banking center.
But it is very harmful to us that the U.S. may
have the wrong image.
When Presta first started making steer-
ing columns, having the wrong image cost
them one of their first orders. In those early
days, Volkswagen refused to give Presta an
Americans need to expand on their idea that
Liechtenstein is only a financial center, and they
should take a closer look at its industrial strength
and manufacturing base to get a better handle
on what this principality has to offer.
Industry and precision manufacturing are the most impor-
tant elements of Liechtensteins economy and the principal-
ity can boast of companies operatng at the cut ng edge of
technological innovaton.
order for steering columns, perhaps under
the misapprehension that the company was
a post office box address and nothing more.
Presta stuck at what it knew best and
emerged as one of the worlds leading innova-
tors. Our competitive advantage is the technol-
ogy we use. We have cold forging technology,
assembly technology, and innovative people. Our
people are the main drive behind our innovative
capabilities, Durrer explained.
To be closer to their main clients, Presta has
production plants worldwide. A steering column
is a big part of the automobile assembly process,
so we like to be close to our customers, and for
that reason we have plants in the U.S., Mexico,
and Brazil, for example, Durrer concluded.
As business begins to pick up for most of
the words automobile makers, Presta is looking
to increase its workforce. It may be the worlds
fastest assembly maker of steering columns and
its high levels of automation ensure good quality
and high volume, but it needs to increase its hu-
man resource base. This just goes to prove that
Liechtensteins policies of innovation and indus-
trial development have been the right ones.
E
www.neutrik.com
Neutrik opticalCON fiber
optic connection system
installed at Capitol Hill.
InnovatIve
fIber optIc solutIons
made In lIechtensteIn
This material was produced by International Creative Solutions (www.ics.us.com) For more information please contact info@ics.us.com Editorial Director: Enrique Maier - Project Director:Fadrique Alvarez - Creative Director: Ana Lorena Ros
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LIECHTENSTEIN
iechtenstein may be many things to many people; to some it is a financial
center that seems as secretive as it is successful, and to others it may
just seem like a very small country landlocked within Europes Alpine
mountain range.
However, the country is much more than either of those opinions: it is a coun-
try that can boast more registered companies than citizensthanks to its highly
industrialized free-enterprise economy. It is a country that can also claim the second-
highest GDP per capita in the world and the worlds second-lowest unemployment
rate. Liechtenstein also has the luxury of being the worlds least indebted nation.
The principality has not achieved these accolades by being a shelter for the rich and
privileged; quite the contrary. Successive governments have fought hard to turn the
economy into a slick, competitive, and globally focused machine. Some observers may
say that being only 62 square miles in sizeabout the size of Washington, DCand
having a population of just 36,000 are reasons why Liechtenstein might be so success-
ful. But on the other hand, it could be argued that such a small nation might have a hard
time standing alone and achieving industrial success. It is only because of the economic
policies in place and the strength of its industrial base that Liechtenstein has flourished.
Commercially speaking, this means that many Americans buy or use products that
come from Liechtenstein, making for a viable commercial relationship between the
United States and the principality. The two countries also work closely together on
financial matters and law enforcement, which further demonstrates important close
political cooperation.
L
Prime Minister Dr. Klaus Tschtscher is very clear on why the relationship works.
We signed a law enforcement treaty on joint operations to combat money laundering
back in 2002. This was the first treaty we signed with the U.S. and it was then followed
by the Tax Information Exchange Agreement in 2008, he explained, adding that, the
agreements define the quality of the relationship between us as we can be seen to be
working together. These agreements do not only exist on paper, but also in practice.
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Economic Affairs Dr. Martin Meyer added
to the plaudits of the strength of the relationship when he spoke about the common
interest the two nations have in combating illegal banking activities and money laun-
dering. The diplomatic relationship between Liechtenstein and the United States is,
and has always been, a good one. We work very closely together in the United Nations
on matters of human rights and in the common fight against terrorism. In this respect
we share the same goals, he explained. As Liechtensteins ambassador to the United
States, Claudia Fritsche, pointed out, In the past four years, Liechtenstein has signed
twenty TIEAs and seven double-taxation agreements.
The deputy prime minister touched on another important point: From an eco-
nomic perspective, we are very interested in a close partnership with the U.S. If
you are under the impression that Liechtenstein is solely a financial center, then this
comment might surprise you. But when you take into consideration that the financial
sector makes up only 33 percent of GDP, while almost 40 percent of GDP is generated
by the industrial sector and, more importantly, industrial exports, then you begin to
understand the importance of the U.S. market.
After Switzerland and Germany, the most important export market for Liechten-
steins products is the United States, and according to the general manager of Liech-
tensteins Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Josef Beck, if you take into account
only the principalitys largest companies, then the United States becomes its foremost
export destination.
Our relationship with the U.S. is vitally important, Mr. Beck explained, adding
that during the past decade, Liechtensteins industrialists and members of the U.S.
Congress have been encouraged to meet for roundtable discussions. We started to
invite congressional delegations to Liechtenstein and we also started a biennial Day
in Washington to present what we have to offer, Beck added.
The ambassador explained that the relationship will continue to develop. We in-
tend to move forward on several fronts to deepen the relationship. We have already
established the Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination at Princeton University.
We also hope to increase academic exchange programsnot only to inform Ameri-
cans about Liechtenstein, but also to increase our understanding of what America is,
and thus build on what is already a positive relationship, Fritsche said.
Liechtenstein
A Global Village
Spotlight on Liechtensteins relationship
with the United States
ach year Liechtenstein exports over
$500 million annually to the United
States, which is no mean feat for
the small principality. Liechtensteins
companies also employ more than 3,500 workers
in the United States. These companies that do busi-
ness with the worlds largest economy are both well-
known household names and some lesser known
high-tech manufacturers that U.S. industry relies on.
The principality also understood early on the
value of reinvestment and research and development
(R&D) for industrial growth. Staggeringly, almost 32
percent of Liechtensteins revenues are reinvested
in R&D, making the industrial innovation and develop-
ment sector a strong driving force of the economy.
This policy of reinvestment and innovation has
ensured that high-tech exports have been the se-
cret success of the economy in recent years. Many
of Liechtensteins companies operate within inter-
nationally sought-after niche markets, and many of
these companies are among the worlds elite.
This is a long way from the parlous state of the
principality seventy years ago, which ensured that
the principality had to turn entrepreneurship into
an art form and then guarantee its own prosperity
by carving out a production line of niche products.
One example is Liechtensteins premier manu-
facturer of innovative electrical and electronic
interconnection products and systems. Founded
as a two-man operation in 1975, Neutrik has
emerged as a world leader in the design, manufac-
ture, and marketing of audio, coaxial, power, and
circular connectors. The company now leads the
way in the professional audio market.
Committed to excellence and innovation, the
Neutrik Group now has subsidiaries in the United
States, Great Britain, France, Germany, and China
and has exclusive distributors in more than eighty
countries worldwide. CEO Werner Bachman was
the companys second employee when he started,
and he confirmed the reason behind the companys
success: From the very day I started work here,
innovation and quality were our priorities, he said.
LIECHTENSTEIN
Developing a modern, high-tech and sophistcated
manufacturing future
Given the very nature of their products,
the company had to look abroad to create a
market large enough to make their business
worthwhile. Curiously, Neutriks first customer
was in Georgetown, Connecticut. However, our
products have reached into the very heart of
the United States, as we now supply the U.S.
Capitol, added Bachman.
Their innovation and quality has led to the
brand becoming confused with the product.
Across the world, customers do not ask for
this-or-that connecter; they ask for this-or-that
Neutrik. That is not a surprise when you consider
that 50 percent of the worlds professional audio
systems are connected with Neutriks products.
Another company that mirrors the principal-
itys success is ThyssenKrupp Presta, the prin-
cipalitys second-largest employer. Belonging
to Germanys ThyssenKrupp Automotive, one
of the worlds largest automobile suppliers, its
research center and headquarters is in Eschen,
Liechtenstein. Presta is the world market leader
in assembled camshafts, and it develops innova-
tive steering systems for almost all of the worlds
most significant automobile manufacturers.
As recently as 1985, the company had no
steering business, yet it now has 25 percent
market share of the worldwide steering column
business. The companys CEO, Guido Durrer,
pointed out just how far Presta has come in
the past two decades: We supply most of the
steering columns for Ford and a large pro-
portion of the columns used by Chrysler. He
added that this shows the importance of the
Liechtenstein-U.S. relationship, saying, We are
a very industrialized country, yet for some rea-
son we are thought of only as a banking center.
But it is very harmful to us that the U.S. may
have the wrong image.
When Presta first started making steer-
ing columns, having the wrong image cost
them one of their first orders. In those early
days, Volkswagen refused to give Presta an
Americans need to expand on their idea that
Liechtenstein is only a financial center, and they
should take a closer look at its industrial strength
and manufacturing base to get a better handle
on what this principality has to offer.
Industry and precision manufacturing are the most impor-
tant elements of Liechtensteins economy and the principal-
ity can boast of companies operatng at the cut ng edge of
technological innovaton.
order for steering columns, perhaps under
the misapprehension that the company was
a post office box address and nothing more.
Presta stuck at what it knew best and
emerged as one of the worlds leading innova-
tors. Our competitive advantage is the technol-
ogy we use. We have cold forging technology,
assembly technology, and innovative people. Our
people are the main drive behind our innovative
capabilities, Durrer explained.
To be closer to their main clients, Presta has
production plants worldwide. A steering column
is a big part of the automobile assembly process,
so we like to be close to our customers, and for
that reason we have plants in the U.S., Mexico,
and Brazil, for example, Durrer concluded.
As business begins to pick up for most of
the words automobile makers, Presta is looking
to increase its workforce. It may be the worlds
fastest assembly maker of steering columns and
its high levels of automation ensure good quality
and high volume, but it needs to increase its hu-
man resource base. This just goes to prove that
Liechtensteins policies of innovation and indus-
trial development have been the right ones.
E
www.neutrik.com
Neutrik opticalCON fiber
optic connection system
installed at Capitol Hill.
InnovatIve
fIber optIc solutIons
made In lIechtensteIn
This material was produced by International Creative Solutions (www.ics.us.com) For more information please contact info@ics.us.com Editorial Director: Enrique Maier - Project Director:Fadrique Alvarez - Creative Director: Ana Lorena Ros
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LIECHTENSTEIN
The Future of
U.S.-Chinese Relations
Confict Is a Choice, Not a Necessity
Henry A. Kissinger
Henry A. Kissinger is Chair of Kissinger Associates and a former
U.S. Secretary of State and National Security Adviser. This essay is
adapted from the afterword to the forthcoming paperback edition of his
latest book, On China (Penguin, 2012).
[44]
On January 19, 2011, U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese
President Hu Jintao issued a joint statement at the end of Hus visit to
Washington. It proclaimed their shared commitment to a positive,
cooperative, and comprehensive U.S.-China relationship. Each
party reassured the other regarding his principal concern, announcing,
The United States reiterated that it welcomes a strong, prosperous,
and successful China that plays a greater role in world aairs. China
welcomes the United States as an Asia-Pacifc nation that contributes
to peace, stability and prosperity in the region.
Since then, the two governments have set about implementing the
stated objectives. Top American and Chinese ocials have exchanged
visits and institutionalized their exchanges on major strategic and
economic issues. Military-to-military contacts have been restarted,
opening an important channel of communication. And at the unocial
level, so-called track-two groups have explored possible evolutions
of the U.S.-Chinese relationship.
Yet as cooperation has increased, so has controversy. Signifcant
groups in both countries claim that a contest for supremacy between
China and the United States is inevitable and perhaps already under
10_Kissinger_pp44_55.indd 44 1/17/12 1:22 PM
foreignaffairs
.
way. In this perspective, appeals for U.S.-Chinese cooperation appear
outmoded and even naive.
The mutual recriminations emerge from distinct yet parallel
analyses in each country. Some American strategic thinkers argue
that Chinese policy pursues two long-term objectives: displacing
the United States as the preeminent power in the western Pacifc
and consolidating Asia into an exclusionary bloc deferring to Chinese
economic and foreign policy interests. In this conception, even
though Chinas absolute military capacities are not formally equal
to those of the United States, Beijing possesses the ability to pose
unacceptable risks in a confict with Washington and is developing
increasingly sophisticated means to negate traditional U.S. advantages.
Its invulnerable second-strike nuclear capability will eventually be
paired with an expanding range of antiship ballistic missiles and
asymmetric capabilities in new domains such as cyberspace and space.
China could secure a dominant naval position through a series of
island chains on its periphery, some fear, and once such a screen exists,
Chinas neighbors, dependent as they are on Chinese trade and
uncertain of the United States ability to react, might adjust their
policies according to Chinese preferences. Eventually, this could
lead to the creation of a Sinocentric Asian bloc dominating the
western Pacifc. The most recent U.S. defense strategy report refects,
at least implicitly, some of these apprehensions.
No Chinese government ocials have proclaimed such a strategy
as Chinas actual policy. Indeed, they stress the opposite. However,
enough material exists in Chinas quasi-ocial press and research
institutes to lend some support to the theory that relations are heading
for confrontation rather than cooperation.
U.S. strategic concerns are magnifed by ideological predispositions
to battle with the entire nondemocratic world. Authoritarian regimes,
some argue, are inherently brittle, impelled to rally domestic support by
nationalist and expansionist rhetoric and practice. In these theories
versions of which are embraced in segments of both the American
left and the American righttension and confict with China grow
out of Chinas domestic structure. Universal peace will come, it is
asserted, from the global triumph of democracy rather than from
appeals for cooperation. The political scientist Aaron Friedberg writes,
10_Kissinger_pp44_55_Blues.indd 45 1/26/12 10:29 AM
Henry A. Kissinger
.
Volume 91 No. 2
forexample,thataliberaldemocraticChinawillhavelittlecauseto
fearitsdemocraticcounterparts,stilllesstouseforceagainstthem.
Therefore,strippedofdiplomaticniceties,theultimateaimofthe
Americanstrategy[shouldbe]tohastenarevolution,albeitapeaceful
one,thatwillsweepawayChinasone-partyauthoritarianstateand
leavealiberaldemocracyinitsplace.
On the Chinese side, the confrontational interpretations follow
an inverse logic.They see the United States as a wounded super-
powerdeterminedtothwarttheriseofanychallenger,ofwhichChina
isthemostcredible.NomatterhowintenselyChinapursuescoop-
eration,someChineseargue,Washingtonsfxedobjectivewillbeto
heminagrowingChinabymilitarydeploymentandtreatycommit-
ments,thuspreventingitfromplayingitshistoricroleastheMiddle
Kingdom. In this perspective, any sustained cooperation with the
UnitedStatesisself-defeating,sinceitwillonlyservetheoverriding
U.S.objectiveofneutralizingChina.Systematichostilityisoccasion-
allyconsideredtoinhereeveninAmericanculturalandtechnological
infuences,whicharesometimescastasaformofdeliberatepressure
designed to corrode Chinas domestic consensus and traditional
values.ThemostassertivevoicesarguethatChinahasbeenunduly
passive in the face of hostile trends and that (for example, in the
caseofterritorialissuesintheSouthChinaSea)Chinashouldcon-
frontthoseofitsneighborswithwhichithasdisputedclaimsand
then,inthewordsofthestrategicanalystLongTao,reason,think
ahead and strike frst before things gradually run out of hand . . .
launch[ing] some tiny-scale battles that could deter provocateurs
fromgoingfurther.
the past need not be prologue
Is there,then,apointinthequestforacooperativeU.S.-Chinese
relationshipandinpoliciesdesignedtoachieveit?Tobesure,the
riseofpowershashistoricallyoftenledtoconfictwithestablished
countries. But conditions have changed. It is doubtful that the
leaderswhowentsoblithelyintoaworldwarin1914wouldhave
donesohadtheyknownwhattheworldwouldbelikeatitsend.
Contemporary leaders can have no such illusions. A major war
foreignaffairs
.
between developed nuclear countries must bring casualties and
upheavals impossible to relate to calculable objectives. Preemption
is all but excluded, especially for a pluralistic democracy such as the
United States.
If challenged, the United States will do what it must to preserve
its security. But it should not adopt confrontation as a strategy of
choice. In China, the United States would
encounter an adversary skilled over the
centuries in using prolonged confict as a
strategy and whose doctrine emphasizes the
psychological exhaustion of the opponent.
In an actual confict, both sides possess the
capabilities and the ingenuity to infict cat-
astrophic damage on each other. By the time
any such hypothetical confagration drew
to a close, all participants would be left ex-
hausted and debilitated. They would then
be obliged to face anew the very task that confronts them today: the
construction of an international order in which both countries are
signifcant components.
The blueprints for containment drawn from Cold War strategies
used by both sides against an expansionist Soviet Union do not apply
to current conditions. The economy of the Soviet Union was weak
(except for military production) and did not aect the global economy.
Once China broke o ties and ejected Soviet advisers, few countries
except those forcibly absorbed into the Soviet orbit had a major stake
in their economic relationship with Moscow. Contemporary China,
by contrast, is a dynamic factor in the world economy. It is a principal
trading partner of all its neighbors and most of the Western industrial
powers, including the United States. A prolonged confrontation
between China and the United States would alter the world economy
with unsettling consequences for all.
Nor would China fnd that the strategy it pursued in its own
confict with the Soviet Union fts a confrontation with the United
States. Only a few countriesand no Asian oneswould treat an
American presence in Asia as fngers to be chopped o (in
Deng Xiaopings graphic phrase about Soviet forward positions).
It would be unusual if
the worlds second-
largest economy did not
translate its economic
power into increased
military capacity.
Henry A. Kissinger
.
Volume 91 No. 2
Even those Asian states that are not members of alliances with
the United States seek the reassurance of an American political
presence in the region and of American forces in nearby seas as
the guarantor of the world to which they have become accus-
tomed. Their approach was expressed by a senior Indonesian
ocial to an American counterpart: Dont leave us, but dont
makeuschoose.
Chinas recent military buildup is not in itself an exceptional
phenomenon: the more unusual outcome would be if the worlds
second-largest economy and largest importer of natural resources
did not translate its economic power into some increased military
capacity. The issue is whether that buildup is open ended and to
whatpurposesitisput.IftheUnitedStatestreatseveryadvancein
Chinesemilitarycapabilitiesasahostileact,itwillquicklyfnditself
enmeshedinanendlessseriesofdisputesonbehalfofesotericaims.
But China must be aware, from its own history, of the tenuous
dividinglinebetweendefensiveandoensivecapabilitiesandofthe
consequencesofanunrestrainedarmsrace.
Chinasleaderswillhavetheirownpowerfulreasonsforrejecting
domesticappealsforanadversarialapproachasindeedtheyhave
publicly proclaimed. Chinas imperial expansion has historically
beenachievedbyosmosisratherthanconquest,orbytheconversion
toChinesecultureofconquerorswhothenaddedtheirownterritories
to the Chinese domain. Dominating Asia militarily would be a
formidableundertaking.TheSovietUnion,duringtheColdWar,
borderedonastringofweakcountriesdrainedbywarandoccupation
anddependentonAmericantroopcommitmentsfortheirdefense.
ChinatodayfacesRussiainthenorth;JapanandSouthKorea,with
Americanmilitaryalliances,totheeast;VietnamandIndiatothe
south;andIndonesiaandMalaysianotfaraway.Thisisnotacon-
stellation conducive to conquest. It is more likely to raise fears of
encirclement.Eachofthesecountrieshasalongmilitarytradition
andwouldposeaformidableobstacleifitsterritoryoritsabilityto
conductanindependentpolicywerethreatened.AmilitantChinese
foreignpolicywouldenhancecooperationamongalloratleastsome
of these nations, evoking Chinas historic nightmare, as happened
intheperiod200910.
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foreignaffairs
.
deali ng wi th the new chi na
Another reason for Chinese restraint in at least the medium
term is the domestic adaptation the country faces. The gap in Chinese
society between the largely developed coastal regions and the unde-
veloped western regions has made Hus objective of a harmonious
society both compelling and elusive. Cultural changes compound
the challenge. The next decades will witness, for the frst time, the
full impact of one-child families on adult Chinese society. This is
bound to modify cultural patterns in a society in which large families
have traditionally taken care of the aged and the handicapped. When
four grandparents compete for the attention of one child and invest
him with the aspirations heretofore spread across many ospring, a
new pattern of insistent achievement and vast, perhaps unfulfllable,
expectations may arise.
All these developments will further complicate the challenges of
Chinas governmental transition starting in 2012, in which the
presidency; the vice-presidency; the considerable majority of the po-
sitions in Chinas Politburo, State Council, and Central Military
Commission; and thousands of other key national and provincial
posts will be staed with new appointees. The new leadership group
will consist, for the most part, of members of the frst Chinese
generation in a century and a half to have lived all their lives in a
country at peace. Its primary challenge will be fnding a way to deal
with a society revolutionized by changing economic conditions,
unprecedented and rapidly expanding technologies of communication,
a tenuous global economy, and the migration of hundreds of millions
of people from Chinas countryside to its cities. The model of gov-
ernment that emerges will likely be a synthesis of modern ideas and
traditional Chinese political and cultural concepts, and the quest for
that synthesis will provide the ongoing drama of Chinas evolution.
These social and political transformations are bound to be followed
with interest and hope in the United States. Direct American inter-
vention would be neither wise nor productive. The United States will,
as it should, continue to make its views known on human rights
issues and individual cases. And its day-to-day conduct will express
its national preference for democratic principles. But a systematic
Henry A. Kissinger
.
Volume 91 No. 2
projecttotransformChinasinstitutionsbydiplomaticpressureand
economicsanctionsislikelytobackfreandisolatetheveryliberalsit
isintendedtoassist.InChina,itwouldbeinterpretedbyaconsider-
ablemajoritythroughthelensofnationalism,recallingearliererasof
foreignintervention.
WhatthissituationcallsforisnotanabandonmentofAmerican
valuesbutadistinctionbetweentherealizableandtheabsolute.The
U.S.-Chinese relationship should not be considered as a zero-sum
game,norcantheemergenceofaprosperousandpowerfulChinabe
assumedinitselftobeanAmericanstrategicdefeat.
Acooperativeapproachchallengespreconceptionsonbothsides.
TheUnitedStateshasfewprecedentsinitsnationalexperienceof
relatingtoacountryofcomparablesize,self-confdence,economic
achievement,andinternationalscopeandyetwithsuchadierent
culture and political system. Nor does history supply China with
precedentsforhowtorelatetoafellowgreatpowerwithapermanent
presenceinAsia,avisionofuniversalidealsnotgearedtowardChinese
conceptions,andallianceswithseveralofChinasneighbors.Priorto
theUnitedStates,allcountriesestablishingsuchapositiondidsoas
apreludetoanattempttodominateChina.
The simplest approach to strategy is to insist on overwhelming
potentialadversarieswithsuperiorresourcesandmateriel.Butinthe
contemporaryworld,thisisonlyrarelyfeasible.ChinaandtheUnited
States will inevitably continue as enduring realities for each other.
Neithercanentrustitssecuritytotheothernogreatpowerdoes,
forlongandeachwillcontinuetopursueitsowninterests,sometimes
attherelativeexpenseoftheother.Butbothhavetheresponsibility
totakeintoaccounttheothersnightmares,andbothwoulddowellto
recognize that their rhetoric, as much as their actual policies, can
feedintotheotherssuspicions.
Chinas greatest strategic fear is that an outside power or powers
willestablishmilitarydeploymentsaroundChinasperipherycapable
ofencroachingonChinasterritoryormeddlinginitsdomesticinsti-
tutions.WhenChinadeemedthatitfacedsuchathreatinthepast,it
wenttowarratherthanrisktheoutcomeofwhatitsawasgathering
trendsin Korea in 1950, against India in 1962, along the northern
borderwiththeSovietUnionin1969,andagainstVietnamin1979.
foreignaffairs
.
March / April 2012 [5 1 ]
The United States fear, sometimes only indirectly expressed, is of
being pushed out of Asia by an exclusionary bloc. The United States
fought a world war against Germany and Japan to prevent such an
outcome and exercised some of its most forceful Cold War diplomacy
under administrations of both political parties to this end against the
Soviet Union. In both enterprises, it is worth noting, substantial joint
U.S.-Chinese eorts were directed against the perceived threat of he-
gemony.
Other Asian countries will insist on their prerogatives to develop
their capacities for their own national reasons, not as part of a contest
between outside powers. They will not willingly consign themselves to a
revived tributary order. Nor do they regard themselves as elements in an
American containment policy or an American project to alter Chinas
domestic institutions. They aspire to good relations with both China
and the United States and will resist any pressure to choose between
the two.
Can the fear of hegemony and the nightmare of military encircle-
ment be reconciled? Is it possible to fnd a space in which both sides can
achieve their ultimate objectives without militarizing their strategies?
For great nations with global capabilities and divergent, even partly con-
ficting aspirations, what is the margin between confict and abdication?
That China will have a major infuence in the regions surrounding it
is inherent in its geography, values, and history. The limits of that
infuence, however, will be shaped by circumstance and policy decisions.
These will determine whether an inevitable quest for infuence turns
into a drive to negate or exclude other independent sources of power.
For nearly two generations, American strategy relied on local regional
defense by American ground forceslargely to avoid the catastrophic
consequences of a general nuclear war. In recent decades, congressional
and public opinion have impelled an end to such commitments in
Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Now, fscal considerations further limit
the range of such an approach. American strategy has been redirected
from defending territory to threatening unacceptable punishment
against potential aggressors. This requires forces capable of rapid inter-
vention and global reach, but not bases ringing Chinas frontiers. What
Washington must not do is combine a defense policy based on budget-
ary restraints with a diplomacy based on unlimited ideological aims.
Henry A. Kissinger
.
Volume 91 No. 2
JustasChineseinfuenceinsurroundingcountriesmayspurfears
of dominance, so eorts to pursue traditional American national
interestscanbeperceivedasaformofmilitaryencirclement.Both
sidesmustunderstandthenuancesbywhichapparentlytraditional
andapparentlyreasonablecoursescanevokethedeepestworriesof
theother.Theyshouldseektogethertodefnethesphereinwhich
theirpeacefulcompetitioniscircumscribed.Ifthatismanagedwisely,
both military confrontation and domination can be avoided; if not,
escalatingtensionisinevitable.Itisthetaskofdiplomacytodiscover
this space, to expand it if possible, and to prevent the relationship
frombeingoverwhelmedbytacticalanddomesticimperatives.
communi ty or conflict
The current worldorderwasbuiltlargelywithoutChinesepartici-
pation,andhenceChinasometimesfeelslessboundthanothersbyits
rules.WheretheorderdoesnotsuitChinesepreferences,Beijinghasset
upalternativearrangements,suchasintheseparatecurrencychannels
beingestablishedwithBrazilandJapanandothercountries.Ifthepat-
ternbecomesroutineandspreadsintomanyspheresofactivity,compet-
ingworldorderscouldevolve.Absentcommongoalscoupledwithagreed
rulesofrestraint,institutionalizedrivalryislikelytoescalatebeyond
thecalculationsandintentionsofitsadvocates.Inanerainwhichun-
precedented oensive capabilities and intrusive technologies multiply,
thepenaltiesofsuchacoursecouldbedrasticandperhapsirrevocable.
Crisismanagementwillnotbeenoughtosustainarelationshipso
globalandbesetbysomanydieringpressureswithinandbetween
both countries, which is why I have argued for the concept of a
Pacifc Community and expressed the hope that China and the
UnitedStatescangenerateasenseofcommonpurposeonatleast
someissuesofgeneralconcern.Butthegoalofsuchacommunitycan-
notbereachedifeithersideconceivesoftheenterpriseasprimarily
amoreeectivewaytodefeatorunderminetheother.NeitherChina
nor the United States can be systematically challenged without its
noticing,andifsuchachallengeisnoted,itwillberesisted.Bothneed
tocommitthemselvestogenuinecooperationandfndawaytocom-
municateandrelatetheirvisionstoeachotherandtotheworld.
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U.S.-Saudi Relationship Increasingly
Strained, Says CFR Report
The U.S.-Saudi relationship has become strained
by increasing mistrust and misunderstanding
most recently over Egypt and Bahrainand is no
longer moored to the two anchors that stabilized
it in the past: a common Cold War perspective and
U.S. operation of the Saudi oil industry, argues
F. Gregory Gause III. In this Council Special
Report from CFRs Center for Preventive Action
(www.cfr.org/cpa), Gause writes that the two
countries can no longer expect to act in close
concert, and the United States should recast the
relationship as transactional, one based on coop-
eration when interests dictate.
Gause recommends that the United States spend its
political capital where it really matters: preventing
the proliferation of nuclear weapons, maintain-
ing regional security, and dismantling terrorist
networks. If Washington keeps its own priorities
in the relationship clear and speaks with one voice
about them to the Saudis, it should be able to realize
those common interests with Saudi Arabia.
Read this report at
www.cfr.org/saudi_arabia_csr.
From now on,
trade-os will
characterize the
[U.S.-Saudi]
relationship more
than a common
worldview.
FAadMA12CSR.indd 2 1/20/12 1:47 PM
foreignaffairs
.
Some tentative steps in that direction have already been under-
taken. For example, the United States has joined several other coun-
tries in beginning negotiations on the Trans-Pacifc Partnership
(tpp), a free-trade pact linking the Americas with Asia. Such an ar-
rangement could be a step toward a Pacifc Community because it
would lower trade barriers among the worlds most productive, dy-
namic, and resource-rich economies and link the two sides of the
ocean in shared projects.
Obama has invited China to join the tpp. However, the terms of
accession as presented by American briefers and commentators have
sometimes seemed to require fundamental changes in Chinas domes-
tic structure. To the extent that is the case, the tpp could be regarded
in Beijing as part of a strategy to isolate China. For its part, China has
put forward comparable alternative arrange-
ments. It has negotiated a trade pact with
the Association of Southeast Asian Nations
and has broached a Northeast Asian trade
pact with Japan and South Korea.
Important domestic political consider-
ations are involved for all parties. But if
China and the United States come to regard
each others trade-pact eorts as elements
in a strategy of isolation, the Asia-Pacifc
region could devolve into competing adver-
sarial power blocs. Ironically, this would be a particular challenge
if China meets frequent American calls to shift from an export-led
to a consumption-driven economy, as its most recent fve-year plan
contemplates. Such a development could reduce Chinas stake in the
United States as an export market even as it encourages other Asian
countries to further orient their economies toward China.
The key decision facing both Beijing and Washington is whether
to move toward a genuine eort at cooperation or fall into a new
version of historic patterns of international rivalry. Both countries
have adopted the rhetoric of community. They have even established
a high-level forum for it, the Strategic and Economic Dialogue,
which meets twice a year. It has been productive on immediate issues,
but it is still in the foothills of its ultimate assignment to produce a
Lecturing a country
with a history of
millennia about its need
to grow up and behave
responsibly can be
needlessly grating.
Henry A. Kissinger
.
Volume 91 No. 2
trulyglobaleconomicandpoliticalorder.Andifaglobalorderdoes
notemergeintheeconomicfeld,barrierstoprogressonmoreemo-
tional and less positive-sum issues, such as territory and security,
maygrowinsurmountable.
the ri sks of rhetoric
As they pursue this process, both sides need to recognize the
impactofrhetoriconperceptionsandcalculations.Americanleaders
occasionally launch broadsides against China, including specifc
proposals for adversarial policies, as domestic political necessities.
This occurs evenperhaps especiallywhen a moderate policy is
the ultimate intention.The issue is not specifc complaints, which
shouldbedealtwithonthemeritsoftheissue,butattacksonthe
basicmotivationsofChinesepolicy,suchasdeclaringChinaastrategic
adversary.Thetargetoftheseattacksisboundtoaskwhetherdomestic
imperatives requiring armations of hostility will sooner or later
requirehostileactions.Bythesametoken,threateningChinesestate-
ments, including those in the semiocial press, are likely to be
interpretedintermsoftheactionstheyimply,whateverthedomestic
pressuresortheintentthatgeneratedthem.
The American debate, on both sides of the political divide, often
describesChinaasarisingpowerthatwillneedtomatureandlearn
howtoexerciseresponsibilityontheworldstage.China,however,sees
itselfnotasarisingpowerbutasareturningone,predominantinits
regionfortwomillenniaandtemporarilydisplacedbycolonialexploit-
erstakingadvantageofChinesedomesticstrifeanddecay.Itviewsthe
prospectofastrongChinaexercisinginfuenceineconomic,cultural,
political,andmilitaryaairsnotasanunnaturalchallengetoworldor-
derbutratherasareturntonormality.Americansneednotagreewith
everyaspectoftheChineseanalysistounderstandthatlecturingacoun-
trywithahistoryofmillenniaaboutitsneedtogrowupandbehave
responsiblycanbeneedlesslygrating.
OntheChineseside,proclamationsatthegovernmentalandthe
informallevelthatChinaintendstorevivetheChinesenationto
its traditional eminence carry dierent implications inside China
andabroad.Chinaisrightlyproudofitsrecentstridesinrestoring
foreignaffairs
.
its sense of national purpose following what it sees as a century of
humiliation. Yet few other countries in Asia are nostalgic for an era
when they were subject to Chinese suzerainty. As recent veterans of
anticolonial struggles, most Asian countries are extremely sensitive to
maintaining their independence and freedom of action vis--vis any
outside power, whether Western or Asian. They seek to be involved
in as many overlapping spheres of economic and political activity as
possible; they invite an American role in the region but seek equi-
librium, not a crusade or confrontation.
The rise of China is less the result of its increased military strength
than of the United States own declining competitive position, driven
by factors such as obsolescent infrastructure, inadequate attention to
research and development, and a seemingly dysfunctional govern-
mental process. The United States should address these issues with
ingenuity and determination instead of blaming a putative adversary.
It must take care not to repeat in its China policy the pattern of conficts
entered with vast public support and broad goals but ended when the
American political process insisted on a strategy of extrication that
amounted to an abandonment, if not a complete reversal, of the
countrys proclaimed objectives.
China can fnd reassurance in its own record of endurance and in
the fact that no U.S. administration has ever sought to alter the reality
of China as one of the worlds major states, economies, and civiliza-
tions. Americans would do well to remember that even when Chinas
gdp is equal to that of the United States, it will need to be distributed
over a population that is four times as large, aging, and engaged in
complex domestic transformations occasioned by Chinas growth and
urbanization. The practical consequence is that a great deal of Chinas
energy will still be devoted to domestic needs.
Both sides should be open to conceiving of each others activities
as a normal part of international life and not in themselves as a cause
for alarm. The inevitable tendency to impinge on each other should
not be equated with a conscious drive to contain or dominate, so
long as both can maintain the distinction and calibrate their actions
accordingly. China and the United States will not necessarily tran-
scend the ordinary operation of great-power rivalry. But they owe it
to themselves, and the world, to make an eort to do so.
The Arab Spring at One
A Year of Living Dangerously
Fouad Ajami
[56]
Fouad Ajami is a Senior Fellow at Stanford Universitys Hoover In-
stitution and Co-Chair of the Hoover Institutions Herbert and Jane
Dwight Working Group on Islamism and the International Order.
Throughout 2011, a rhythmic chant echoed across the Arab lands:
The people want to topple the regime. It skipped borders with ease,
carried in newspapers and magazines, on Twitter and Facebook, on
the airwaves of al Jazeera and al Arabiya. Arab nationalism had been
written o, but here, in full bloom, was what certainly looked like
a pan-Arab awakening. Young people in search of political freedom
and economic opportunity, weary of waking up to the same tedium
day after day, rose up against their sclerotic masters.
It came as a surprise. For almost two generations, waves of democ-
racy had swept over other regions, from southern and eastern Europe
to Latin America, from East Asia to Africa. But not the Middle East.
There, tyrants had closed up the political world, become owners of
their countries in all but name. It was a bleak landscape: terrible rulers,
sullen populations, a terrorist fringe that hurled itself in frustration
at an order bereft of any legitimacy. Arabs had started to feel they
were cursed, doomed to despotism. The regions exceptionalism was
becoming not just a human disaster but a moral embarrassment.
Outside powers had winked at this reality, silently thinking this
was the best the Arabs could do. In a sudden burst of Wilsonianism in
Iraq and after, the United States had put its power behind liberty.
Saddam Hussein was fushed out of a spider hole, the Syrian brigades
of terror and extortion were pushed out of Lebanon, and the despotism
11_Ajami_56_65.indd 56 1/17/12 1:26 PM
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.
of Hosni Mubarak, long a pillar of Pax Americana, seemed to lose
some of its mastery. But post-Saddam Iraq held out mixed messages:
there was democracy, but also blood in the streets and sectarianism.
The autocracies hunkered down and did their best to thwart the new
Iraqi project. Iraq was set ablaze, and the Arab autocrats could point
to it as a cautionary tale of the folly of unseating even the worst of
despots. Moreover, Iraq carried a double burden of humiliation for
Sunni Arabs: the bearer of liberty there was the United States, and
the war had empowered the Shiite stepchildren of the Arab world.
The result was a stando: the Arabs could not snu out or ignore the
ficker of freedom, but nor did the Iraqi example prove the subversive
beacon of hope its proponents had expected.
It was said by Arabs themselves that George W. Bush had unleashed
a tsunami on the region. True, but the Arabs were good at waiting out
storms, and before long, the Americans themselves lost heart and aban-
doned the quest. An election in 2006 in the Palestinian territories went
the way of Hamas, and a new disillusionment with democracys verdict
overtook the Bush administration. The surge in Iraq rescued the
American war there just in time, but the more ambitious vision of
reforming the Arab world was given up. The autocracies had survived
the brief moment of American assertiveness. And soon, a new standard-
bearer of American power, Barack Obama, came with a reassuring
message: the United States was done with change; it would make its
peace with the status quo, renewing its partnership with friendly autocrats
even as it engaged the hostile regimes in Damascus and Tehran. The
United States was to remain on the Kabul hook for a while longer, but
the greater Middle East would be left to its Furies.
When a revolt erupted in Iran against the theocrats in the frst sum-
mer of his presidency, Obama was caught fatfooted by the turmoil.
Determined to conciliate the rulers, he could not fnd the language to
speak to the rebels. Meanwhile, the Syrian regime, which had given up
its dominion in Lebanon under duress, was now keen to retrieve it. A
stealth campaign of terror and assassinations, the power of Hezbollah
on the ground, and the subsidies of Iran all but snued out the Cedar
Revolution that had been the pride of Bushs diplomacy.
Observers looking at the balance of forces in the region in late 2010
would have been smart to bet on a perpetuation of autocracy. Behold-
11_Ajami_56_65_Blues.indd 57 1/26/12 10:31 AM
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.
Volume 91 No. 2
ing Bashar al-Assad in Damascus, they would have been forgiven
the conclusion that a similar fate awaited Libya, Tunisia, Yemen, and the
large Egyptian state that had been the trendsetter in Arab political and
cultural life. Yet beneath the surface stability, there was political misery
and sterility. Arabs did not need a human development report to tell
them of their desolation. Consent had drained out of public life; the
only glue between ruler and ruled was suspicion and fear. There was no
public project to bequeath to a generation coming into its ownand
this the largest and youngest population yet.
And then it happened. In December, a despairing Tunisian fruit
vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi took one way out, setting himself
on fre to protest the injustices of the status quo. Soon, millions of his
unnamed fellows took another, pouring into the streets. Suddenly, the
despots, seemingly secure in their dominion, deities in all but name, were
on the run. For its part, the United States scurried to catch up with the
upheaval. In too many places, in too many ways, the regions foundations
are sinking into the sand, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pro-
claimed in Qatar in mid-January 2011, as the storm was breaking out. The
Arab landscape lent her remarks ample confrmation; what she omitted
was that generations of American diplomacy would be buried, too.
the fi re thi s ti me
The revolt was a settlement of accounts between the powers that
be and populations determined to be done with despots. It erupted
in a small country on the margins of the Arab political experience,
more educated and prosperous and linked to Europe than the norm.
As the rebellion made its way eastward, it skipped Libya and arrived
in Cairo, the mother of the world. There, it found a stage worthy
of its ambitions.
Often written o as the quintessential land of political submission,
Egypt has actually known ferocious rebellions. It had been Mubaraks
good fortune that the land tolerated him for three decades. The desig-
nated successor to Anwar al-Sadat, Mubarak had been a cautious man,
but his reign had sprouted dynastic ambitions. For 18 magical days in
January and February, Egyptians of all walks of life came together in
Tahrir Square demanding to be rid of him. The senior commanders
11_Ajami_56_65.indd 58 1/17/12 1:26 PM
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.
reuters / amr dalsh
Free at last: protesting in Tahrir Square, Cairo, December 21, 2011
of the armed forces cast him aside, and he joined his fellow despot,
Tunisias Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, who had fallen a month earlier.
From Cairo, the awakening became a pan-Arab aair, catching
fre in Yemen and Bahrain. As a monarchy, the latter was a rare ex-
ception, since in this season it was chiefy the republics of strongmen
that were seized with unrest. But where most monarchies had a ft
between ruler and ruled, Bahrain was riven by a fault line between its
Sunni rulers and its Shiite majority. So it was vulnerable, and it was in
the nature of things that an eruption there would turn into a sectar-
ian feud. Yemen, meanwhile, was the poorest of the Arab states, with
secessionist movements raging in its north and south and a polarizing
leader, Ali Abdullah Saleh, who had no skills save the art of politi-
cal survival. The feuds of Yemen were obscure, the quarrels of tribes
and warlords. The wider Arab tumult gave Yemenis eager to be rid of
their ruler the heart to challenge him.
Then, the revolt doubled back to Libya. This was the kingdom of
silence, the realm of the deranged, self-proclaimed dean of Arab rul-
ers, Muammar al-Qaddaf. For four tormenting decades, Libyans
had been at the mercy of this prison warden, part tyrant, part buoon.
Qaddaf had eviscerated his country, the richest in Africa yet with an
11_Ajami_56_65.indd 59 1/17/12 1:26 PM
Fouad Ajami
.
Volume 91 No. 2
abysmally impoverished population. In the interwar years, Libya had
known savage colonial rule under the Italians. It gained a brief respite
under an ascetic ruler, King Idris, but in the late 1960s was gripped by
a revolutionary fever. Iblis wa la Idris, went the maxim of the time,
Better the devil than Idris. And the country got what it wanted. Oil
sustained the madness; European leaders and American intellectuals
alike came courting. Now, in 2011, Benghazi, at some remove from
the capital, rose up, and history gave the Libyans a chance.
The Egyptian rulers had said that their country was not Tunisia.
Qaddaf said that his republic was not Tunisia or Egypt. Eventually,
Assad was saying that Syria was not Tunisia, Egypt, or Libya. Assad
was young, not old; his regime had more
legitimacy because it had confronted Israel
rather than collaborated with it. He spoke
too soon: in mid-March, it was Syrias turn.
Syria was where Islam had made its
home after it outgrew the Arabian Peninsula
and before it slipped out of the hands of
the Arabs into those of the Persians and the
Turks. Yet decades earlier, Bashar al-Assads
father, Hafeza man of supreme cunning and political skillhad
ridden the military and the Baath Party to absolute power, creating a
regime in which power rested with the countrys Alawite minority.
The marriage of despotism and sectarianism begat the most fearsome
state in the Arab east.
When the rebellion broke out there in 2011, it had a distinct geogra-
phy, as the French political scientist Fabrice Balanche has shown, based
in the territories and urban quarters of the countrys Sunni Arabs. It
erupted in Daraa, a remote provincial town in the south, then spread to
Hamah, Homs, Jisr al-Shughour, Rastan, Idlib, and Dayr az Zawr
skipping over Kurdish and Druze areas and the mountain villages
and coastal towns that make up the Alawite strongholds. The vio-
lence in the Syrian uprising has been most pronounced in Homs, the
countrys third-largest city, because of its explosive demographics
two-thirds Sunni, one-quarter Alawite, one-tenth Christian.
Sectarianism was not all, of course. Syria has had one of the highest
birthrates in the region, with its population having almost quadrupled
Suddenly, the despots,
seemingly secure in
their dominion, deities
in all but name, were
on the run.
11_Ajami_56_65.indd 60 1/17/12 1:26 PM
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Report Warns States on Chinas Periphery
Are Potential Sources of Regional Instability
Chinas growing global engagement and presence has increased
the number of conceivable places and issues over which it could
nd itself at odds with the United States, but potential develop-
ments in the territories immediately adjacent to China remain the
most likelyand the most worrisomesources of friction. In
this Center for Preventive Action study, Managing Instability on
Chinas Periphery, CFR scholars provide policy options for pre-
venting a major crisis and mitigating the consequences in North
Korea, Myanmar, Pakistan, and Central Asia.
www.cfr.org/china_periphery_memos
Report Calls for Strengthening Global
Architecture to Prevent Deadly Conict
With the U.S. military overstretched and Washington facing acute
scal pressures, CFR scholars Paul B. Stares and Micah Zenko
urge the United States to nurture eective international partner-
ships to help prevent and manage violent conicts that threaten
U.S. interests. By actively improving the global architecture for
preventive actionthat is, the ability of leading international
institutions to carry out conict preventionthe United States
will have more eective partners in instances where it has a major
stake and lessen the need for U.S. involvement when it does not.
www.cfr.org/partners_in_preventive_action
New from CFRs
Center for Preventive Action
www.cfr.org/cpa
CFRcpaFAadJF12.indd 2 11/28/11 10:11 AM
foreign affairs
.
since Hafez seized power in 1970. The arteries of the regime had
hardened, with a military-merchant complex dominating political and
economic life. There was not much patronage left for the state to dispose
of, since under the banner of privatization in recent years, the state had
pulled o a disappearing act. The revolt fused a sense of economic
disinheritance and the wrath of a Sunni majority determined to rid
itself of the rule of a godless lot.
where thi ngs stand
There has, of course, been no uniform script for the Arab regimes
in play. Tunisia, an old state with a defned national identity, settled
its aairs with relative ease. It elected a constituent assembly in
which al Nahda, an Islamist party, secured a plurality. Al Nahdas
leader, Rachid al-Ghannouchi, was a shrewd man; years in exile had
taught him caution, and his party formed a coalition government
with two secular partners.
In Libya, foreign intervention helped the rebels topple the regime.
Qaddaf was pulled out of a drainage pipe and beaten and murdered,
and so was one of his sons. These were the hatreds and the wrath
that the ruler himself had planted; he reaped what he had sown. But
wealth, a sparse population, and foreign attention should see Libya
through. No history in the making there could be as deadly to Libyans,
and others, as the Qaddaf years.
The shadows of Iran and Saudi Arabia hover over Bahrain. There
is no mass terror, but the political order is not pretty. There is sectarian
discrimination and the oddness of a ruling dynasty, the House of
Khalifa, that conquered the area in the late years of the eighteenth
century but has still not made peace with the population. Outsiders
man the security forces, and true stability seems a long way o.
As for Yemen, it is the quintessential failed state. The footprint
of the government is light, the rulers oer no redemption, but there
is no draconian terror. The country is running out of water; jihad-
ists on the run from the Hindu Kush have found a home: it is Af-
ghanistan with a coastline. The men and women who went out
into the streets of Sanaa in 2011 sought the rehabilitation of their
country, a more dignifed politics than they have been getting from
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Fouad Ajami
.
Volume 91 No. 2
the cynical acrobat at the helm for more than three decades. Whether
they will get it is unclear.
Syria remains in chaos. Hamas left Damascus in December be-
cause it feared being left on the wrong side of the mounting Arab
consensus against the Syrian regime. No Iran, no Hezbollah; we
want rulers who fear Allah, has been one of the more meaningful
chants of the protesters. Alawite rule has been an anomaly, and the
regime, through its brutal response to the uprising, with security
forces desecrating mosques, fring at worshipers, and ordering hap-
less captives to proclaim, There is no God but Bashar, has written
its own regional banishment. Hafez committed cruelties of his
own, but he always managed to remain within the Arab fold. Bashar
is dierentrecklessand has prompted even the Arab League,
which has a history of overlooking the follies of its members, to
suspend Damascus membership.
The fght still rages, Aleppo and Damascus have not risen, and
the embattled ruler appears convinced that he can resist the laws of
gravity. Unlike in Libya, no foreign rescue mission is on the horizon.
But with all the uncertainties, this much can be said: the fearsome
security state that Hafez, the Baath Party, and the Alawite soldiers
and intelligence barons built is gone for good. When consent and
popular enthusiasm fell away, the state rested on fear, and fear was
defeated. In Syria, the bonds between the holders of power and the
population have been irreparably broken.
what follows pharaoh
Egypt, meanwhile, may have lost the luster of old, but this
Arab time shall be judged by what eventually happens there. In
the scenarios of catastrophe, the revolution will spawn an Islamic
republic: the Copts will fee, tourism revenues be lost for good,
and Egyptians will yearn for the iron grip of a pharaoh. The strong
performance of the Muslim Brotherhood and of an even more
extremist Salaf party in recent parliamentary elections, together
with the splintering of the secular, liberal vote, appears to justify
concern about the countrys direction. But Egyptians have proud
memories of liberal periods in their history. Six decades of military
11_Ajami_56_65.indd 62 1/17/12 1:26 PM
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.
rule robbed them of the experience of open politics, and they are
unlikely to give it up now without a struggle.
The elections were transparent and clarifying. Liberal and secular
forces were not ready for the contest, whereas the Brotherhood had
been waiting for such a historic moment for
decades and seized its opportunity. No sooner
had the Salafsts come out of the catacombs
than they began to unnerve the population,
and so they pulled back somewhat from their
extreme positions. The events in Tahrir
Square transfxed the world, but as the young
Egyptian intellectual Samuel Tadros has put it, Egypt is not Cairo and
Cairo is not Tahrir Square. When the dust settles, three forces will
contest Egypts futurethe army, the Brotherhood, and a broad liberal
and secular coalition of those who want a civil polity, the separation of
religion and politics, and the saving graces of a normal political life.
The Brotherhood brings to the struggle its time-honored mix of
political cunning and an essential commitment to imposing a political
order shaped by Islam. Its founder, Hasan al-Banna, was struck down by
an assassin in 1949 but still stalks the politics of the Muslim world. A
ceaseless plotter, he talked of Gods rule, but in the shadows, he struck
deals with the palace against the dominant political party of his day, the
Wafd. He played the political game as he put together a formidable
paramilitary force, seeking to penetrate the ocer corpssomething
his inheritors have pined for ever since. He would doubtless look with
admiration on the tactical skills of his successors as they maneuver
between the liberals and the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces,
partaking of the tumult of Tahrir Square but stepping back from the
exuberance to underline their commitment to sobriety and public order.
The plain truth of it is that Egypt lacks the economic wherewithal
to build a successful modern Islamic order, whatever that might mean.
The Islamic Republic of Iran rests on oil, and even the moderate
ascendancy of the Justice and Development Party, or akp, in Turkey is
secured by prosperity stemming from the devout bourgeoisie in the
Anatolian hill towns. Egypt lies at the crossroads of the world, living
o tourism, the Suez Canal, infusions of foreign aid, and remittances
from Egyptians abroad. Virtue must bow to necessity: in the last year,
Before the revolt, the
Arab world had grown
morose and menacing.
11_Ajami_56_65.indd 63 1/17/12 1:26 PM
Fouad Ajami
.
Volume 91 No. 2
thecountrysforeignreservesdwindledfrom$36billionto$20billion.
Infationhammersatthedoor,thepriceofimportedwheatishigh,
andthebillshavetobepaid.Fourfnanceministershavecomeand
gone since Mubaraks fall. A desire for stability now balances the
headysatisfactionthatadespotwasbroughtdown.
TherearemonumentalproblemsstaringEgyptsleadersintheface,
andthereluctanceofboththeBrotherhoodandthearmedforcesto
assumepoweristelling.Goodsenseandpragmatismmightyetprevail.
AplausibledivisionofspoilsandresponsibilitymightgivetheBrother-
hoodthedomainsofgovernancedearesttoiteducation,socialwelfare,
and the judiciarywith the military getting defense, intelligence,
the peace with Israel, the military ties to the United States, and a
retentionoftheocercorpseconomicprerogatives.Liberalsecularists
wouldhavelargenumbers,asayintherhythmofdailylifeinacountry
sohardtoregimentandorganize,andthechancetofeldacompelling
potentialleaderinafuturepresidentialelection.
Fortwocenturiesnow,EgypthasbeenengagedinaSisypheanstrug-
gleformodernityandaplaceamongthenationsworthyofitsambitions.
Ithasnotfaredwell,yetitcontinuestotry.LastAugust,asceneplayed
out that could give Egyptians a measure of solace.The countrys last
pharaohmayitbesocametocourtonagurney.Sir,Iampresent,
theformerrulersaidtothepresidingjudge.Mubarakwasnotpulledout
ofadrainagepipeandslaughtered,aswasQaddaf,nordidhehunker
downwithhisfamilyandmurderhisownpeopleatwill,ashasAssad.
TheEgyptianshavealwayshad,inE.M.Forsterswords,theabilityto
harmonizecontendingassertions,andtheymaydosoonceagain.
the thi rd great awakeni ng
This tumult,thisawakening,isthethirdofitskindinmodernArab
history.Thefrst,apolitical-culturalrenaissancebornofadesiretojoin
themodernworld,cameinthelate1800s.Ledbyscribesandlawyers,
would-be parliamentarians and Christian intellectuals, it sought to
reformpoliticallife,separatereligionfrompolitics,emancipatewomen,
andmovepastthedebrisoftheOttomanEmpire.Fittinglyenough,
thatgreatmovement,withBeirutandCairoattheheadofthepack,
founditschroniclerinGeorgeAntonius,aChristianwriterofLebanese
11_Ajami_56_65_Blues.indd 64 1/26/12 10:31 AM
foreign affairs
.
birth, Alexandrian youth, a Cambridge education, and service in the
British administration in Palestine. His 1938 book, The Arab Awakening,
remains the principal manifesto of Arab nationalism.
The second awakening came in the 1950s and gathered force in the
decade following. This was the era of Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt,
Habib Bourguiba in Tunisia, and the early leaders of the Baath Party in
Iraq and Syria. No democrats, the leaders of that time were intensely
political men engaged in the great issues of the day. They came from
the middle class or even lower and had dreams of power, of industrial-
ization, of ridding their people of the sense of inferiority instilled by
Ottoman and then colonial rule. No simple audit can do these men
justice: they had monumental accomplishments, but then, explosive
demographics and their own authoritarian proclivities and shortcom-
ings undid most of their work. When they faltered, police states and
political Islam flled the void.
This third awakening came in the nick of time. The Arab world
had grown morose and menacing. Its populations loathed their rul-
ers and those leaders foreign patrons. Bands of jihadists, forged in
the cruel prisons of dreadful regimes, were scattered about every-
where looking to kill and be killed. Mohamed Bouazizi summoned
his fellows to a new history, and across the region, millions have
heeded his call. Last June, the Algerian author Boualem Sansal wrote
Bouazizi an open letter. Dear Brother, it said,
I write these few lines to let you know were doing well, on the whole,
though it varies from day to day: sometimes the wind changes, it
rains lead, life bleeds from every pore. . . .
But lets take the long view for a moment. Can he who does not
know where to go fnd the way? Is driving the dictator out the end?
From where you are, Mohamed, next to God, you can tell that not all
roads lead to Rome; ousting a tyrant doesnt lead to freedom. Prisoners
like trading one prison for another, for a change of scenery and the
chance to gain a little something along the way.
The best day after a bad emperor is the frst, the Roman historian
Tacitus once memorably observed. This third Arab awakening is in
the scales of history. It has in it both peril and promise, the possibility
of prison but also the possibility of freedom.
11_Ajami_56_65.indd 65 1/17/12 1:26 PM
Why We Still Need
the World Bank
Looking Beyond Aid
Robert B. Zoellick
Robert B. Zoellick is President of the World Bank Group.
[66]
In 2007, the World Bank was in crisis. Some saw conficts over its lead-
ership. Others blamed the institution itself. When the International
Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the cornerstone of what
became the World Bank Group, was founded in 1944, poor and
war-torn countries had little access to private capital. Sixty years later,
however, private-sector fnancial fows dwarfed public development
assistance. The time when middle-income countries depended on
ocial assistance is thus past, Jessica Einhorn, a former managing
director of the World Bank wrote in these pages in 2006, and the ibrd
seems to be a dying institution. In roundtable discussions and op-ed
pages, the question was the same: Do we still need the World Bank?
I took the helm of the World Bank in 2007, bringing with me a
dierent vantage point, gained from historical perspective, personal
experience, and my sense of the international landscape: that institu-
tions matter. The creators of the Bretton Woods multilateral system
had designed an international economic architecture to deal with the
causes of the global fnancial breakdown in the 1930s and with the
economic and security problems they thought would follow World
War II. The World Bank was part of that framework, which covered
monetary and currency issues, trade, investment, development, and
the reconstruction of broken states.
In 2007, those challenges remained, although the conditions were
vastly dierent. The rise and diusion of private capital and free
12_Zoellick_pp66_78.indd 66 1/17/12 1:33 PM
foreign affairs
.
enterprise around the world now oered developing countries a great
opportunity. Yet that did not obviate the need for the World Bank,
because it was never simply about loans and grants: its role has been
to contribute to the development of market economies in an open
international systemfostering growth, opportunity, and hope and
overcoming poverty within a better political and security order.
Not only had the world changed, but the World Bank had changed,
too. It now encompassed four policy and fnancing arms: the ibrd; the
International Development Association, or ida (the banks special fund
for the poorest 79 countries); the International Finance Corporation, or
ifc (its private-sector arm); and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee
Agency (which oers investors insurance against political risk).
To accomplish its mission, the World Bank needed new directions,
frmer guidance, and better execution. It had to adapt to shifts in
economic infuence, with emerging markets becoming new economic
engines and development no longer being about a North-South
hegemony. In developing countries, it needed to assist the private
sectorwhether investors from abroad or companies at hometo
reuters / jason lee
Robert Zoellick in Beijing, September 5, 2011
Robert B. Zoellick
.
Volume 91 No. 2
clear away obstacles to entrepreneurship. It needed to foster inclu-
sive and sustainable growth, and shared responsibilities, within a
changed international system. The job for our leadership team was
to point out the new directions, build support and partnerships,
translate the overarching vision into specifc actions, remain alert
to opportunities to innovate, and execute, execute, execute.
Before long, the institution was shifting from debating existential
questions to asking new, practical ones. What could it do to pro-
mote food security and better nutrition in the face of rising food
and fuel prices? How could it help China complete its transition
to a market economy and to a growth model less dependent on exports
and investment? How could it help countries in the Middle East
meet the demand for jobs today and build sustainable political
economies in the future? What could it teach cities dealing with
climate change?
Communicating this new mission has remained a challenge. One
of the problems of the World Bank is that it is called a bank. Most
people associate banks with lending money (at least they have until
recently), but fnancing is only one part of what the organization
does. When it is most eective, the World Bank shares knowledge;
develops long-lasting markets, institutions, and capacities; and oers
diverse fnancing (whether it takes the form of equity, guarantees,
loans, grants, or risk management). Combining all three elements,
the bank can improve lives and countries.
These were the challenges before us in 2007. In a larger sense, the
World Bank was one part of a bigger strategic question: How should
the United States and others in the world modernize multilateralism?
The world had inherited its regimes and institutions from the Wise
Men who created them after World War II; after the Cold War,
multilateralism was expanded but only slightly retooled.
Since 2007, the international economy has witnessed tectonic
shifts and a reordering of power relationships as it has struggled
to recover from the greatest blow since the 1930s. Developing
countries have provided two-thirds of all economic growth over the
last fve years, helping compensate for the stumbling industrialized
world. Developing countries have also become the source of economic
ideas, development models, investment, and even foreign aid. The
please contact us at publications@un.org or call +1 212 963 8065
World Economic Situation
and Prospects 2012
This Report provides an overview of recent global
economic performance and short-term
prospects for the world economy and of some
key global economic policy and development
issues. One of its purposes is to serve as a point
of reference for discussions on economic,
social and related issues taking place in various
United Nations entities during the year.
ISBN 13: 9789211091649
200 page(s), 8.5x11
Publisher: United Nations, Department
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Coming of Age: UN-Private Sector
Collaboration since 2000
This report charts the evolution of UN-
business engagement since 2000. The
launch of the United Nations Global
Compact in 2000 signalled the beginning
of a new phase in UN engagement with
the private sector one in which the
private sectors role and responsibility in
helping achieve UN development goals,
including the Millennium Development
Goals, has become politically accepted and
operationally scalable.
Release Date: October, 2011
ISBN 13: 9789211046083
38 page(s), 8.5x11
Publisher: United Nations, United Nations
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Youth Xchange: Climate Change
and Lifestyles Guidebook
Youth Xchange Guidebook on Climate
Change and Lifestyles aims to answer the
questions that young people aged from 15 to
24 may have, and to inspire them in their daily
lives. This guidebook provides information,
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relevant to young people and their everyday
lives, such as food and drink, travel and
transport, leisure and entertainment. It
channels the relevant information related
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frightening manner, helping young people
develop alternate visions and set goals
towards improving their future.
Release Date: December, 2011
ISBN 13: 9789280732115
60 page(s)
Publisher: United Nations
Environment Programme
Industrial Commodity Statistics
Yearbook 2008:
Physical Quantity Data (Vol.I) &
Monetary Value Data (Vol.II)
The Security Council: Working
Methods Handbook
This Handbook is designed both for insiders
as well as the public at large. It contains an
introduction which places the Security
Council in the larger context of the United
Nations and how it operates. It is followed
by practical information of the Security
Council agenda, briengs, meetings,
programme of work, membership, etc., as
well as by the articles of the UN Charter
related to the work of the Security Council,
its Provisional Rules of Procedure, and
other documents.
Release Date: October, 2011
ISBN 13: 9789211370355
106 page(s), 6x9
Publisher: United Nations, Department of
Public Information
Transition to a Green Economy:
Benets, Challenges and
Risks from a Sustainable
Development Perspective
This Report seeks to support the preparations
for the United Nations Conference on
Sustainable Development, or Rio+20, where
one of the themes will be green economy in
the context of sustainable development and
poverty eradication. By taking a structuralize
approach, the authors underline that the
transition to a green economy involves no
less than a technological transformation,
with deep impacts on production structures
as well as on consumption patterns.
ISBN 13: 9789211046168
96 page(s)
Publisher: United Nations, Department
This publication provides statistics on the
production of about 600 major industrial
commodities. Data was provided for
the ten-year period of 1999-2008 for
approximately 200 countries and territories.
The commodities have been selected on the
basis of their importance in world production
and trade. This edition is the fourth to provide
data on the value of industrial production.
Release Date: December, 2011
ISBN 13: 9789210613019
1324 page(s), 8.5x11
Publisher: United Nations, Department of
Economic and Social Aairs
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040a_28_CACP.indd 1 1/26/12 4:20:48 PM
foreign affairs
.
Why We Still Need the World Bank
institutions, national and international, designed for the old order have
been straining at their seams to accommodate this new dynamic.
Today, some of those who see only the weaknesses and failures
of multilateral organizations advocate abandoning them altogether.
But the worlds multilateral bodies oer a thin but vital tissue connect-
ing sovereign nations that pursue common interests. The pragmatic
approach, then, is to make these institutions, with all their imper-
fections, work better. Over the past fve years, the World Bank has
customized its services to solve problems for diverse developing
clients in the public and private sectors; expanded its capital base
and innovative fnancing tools; emphasized the importance of good
governance and anticorruption eorts; democratized development
through openness and transparency; and updated its representation
and operations to increase the voice and responsibilities of develop-
ing countries. Although the bank has made progress on all these
fronts, it canand shoulddo much more.
worki ng for cli ents
Developing countries are the World Banks clientsnot the
objects of old structural adjustment policies. This notion may seem
obvious, but it represents an important shift in mindset. The bank
should be a seeker of solutions, not a purveyor of prescriptions. If the
best textbook solution does not ft the clients political economic
context, the bank has not helped solve the problem. At the same time,
the banks experts need to be able to share knowledge about how
other countries are solving similar problems. As one senior Indian
ocial told me, I dont need another expert on India. Ive got more
than a billion of them. I need world-class experts on pension systems,
public-private infrastructure ventures, and educational attainment.
Finance alone is rarely the answer.
Clients have vastly dierent needs. Countries struggling to break
out of cycles of violence, poor governance, instability, and poverty
need much more than development theories. During my time in the
U.S. government, I saw how the felds of security, economics, and
diplomacy often worked together ftfully in countries struggling with
confict. The World Bank can help connect these disciplines. In 1944,
Robert B. Zoellick
.
Volume 91 No. 2
The World Bank should
be a seeker of solutions,
not a purveyor of
prescriptions.
the R in ibrd stood for the reconstruction of Europe and Japan;
today, it represents the World Banks work in such troubled places
as Afghanistan, Haiti, and Liberia.
Middle-income countriesBrazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico,
Turkey, and othersface entirely dierent problems. These countries,
which are still home to two-thirds of the
worlds population living on less than $2 a
day, have stark development challenges of
their own. At the same time, they are playing
an increasingly important role in the world
economy and in the development of other
countries. Their actions will be indispensable
to crafting sustainable solutions to transna-
tional problems, whether they involve health, trade, the environment,
or fnancial integration. The bank needs to not only assist middle-
income countries but also share their experiences with others and
encourage them to assume greater international responsibilities.
An early challenge revealed the banks new problem-solving
approach. At the end of 2007, food prices surged. Soaring fuel
prices exacerbated the stress. Some World Bank economists,
thinking in aggregate terms, said that returns from high commod-
ity prices would allow most countries to oset the danger. Others
suggested that the problem would be best handled by humanitar-
ian agencies, not long-term development institutions. But tens of
millions of poor people had no cushion to soften the blow. Fami-
lies went without meals. Farmers could not get the inputs they
needed. Food riots broke out. It made no sense to speak of the
long term unless populations and governments could address the
short-term crisis.
The World Bank moved swiftly, working with un agencies to set
up the Global Food Crisis Response Program and creating a rapid
fnancing facility to support farmers. At the same time, higher prices
and greater demand for farm products from growing populations
oered an opportunity to promote growth if the bank could help
boost productivity and production. Today, the banks crisis program
has helped 40 million vulnerable people in 47 countries. Its invest-
ments extend across the agricultural value chain, involving research,
foreign affairs
.
March / April 2012 [7 1 ]
property rights (including for female farmers), seeds, irrigation,
fertilizer, storage, and marketingalways encouraging private-
sector development. The banks fnancial expertise can help farmers
and food buyers manage risks through weather derivatives, crop
insurance, and futures markets.
When the food and fuel crises were overtaken by a global fnan-
cial crisis, the World Bank mobilized more than $200 billion of
fnancial commitments to support developing countries, disbursing
much of it rapidly. Equally important, it addressed specifc market
breakdowns by expanding trade fnance, recapitalizing banks in
developing countries, and purchasing distressed assets. It cooperated
with Australia, Japan, and the Asian Development Bank to oer
Indonesia $5.5 billion to draw on if the conditions there worsened;
the backstops very existence allowed the Indonesian government to
spend more to counter the downturn and assured investors of its
ability to fund its expansionary budget. Working with the European
Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the European Invest-
ment Bank, the European Commission, and the International
Monetary Fund, the World Bank announced that it would provide
up to $25 billion to encourage banks in the eu to keep credit fowing
to eastern Europe.
The bank is also working with clients on long-term investments
to lay the foundations for recovery, focusing on three areas. First, it
is investing in infrastructure to help create jobs, increase productivity
for tomorrow, and raise demand for machinery and services, includ-
ing from developed countries. Second, it is fostering safety nets to
protect the most vulnerable. Sharing lessons from Brazil and Mexico,
the bank has helped over 40 countries start conditional cash-transfer
programs, which pay poor families that keep their children in school
and get preventive health care. Third, through the ifc, the World
Bank has extended fnancing to the private sector, especially to small
and medium-sized businesses and microfnance institutions. This
customized approach is a far cry from the plain vanilla lending of the
past. At times, the bank must say no to clients that refuse to meet
standards on and safeguards regarding corruption, the environment,
and governance. Yet the vast majority want to upgrade both the quality
and the quantity of their growth.
Robert B. Zoellick
.
Volume 91 No. 2
expandi ng fi nanci al i nnovation
To raise money and make eective investments, the World Bank
must produce results, broaden its base of fnancial support, and oer
its clients innovative fnancial tools. Every three years, the bank needs to
replenish its fund for the poorest countries, the ida. Even now, during
a time of fnancial limitations, the World Banks shareholdersits
187 member countriesdecided that the institutions priorities and
performance warranted frst-rate fnancial support. In 2007 and 2010,
two record-breaking ida replenishment eorts raised more than $90
billion. In 2010, the shareholders also backed the ibrds frst capital
increase in more than 20 years, enabling the institution to meet its
clients needs in a time of crisis by issuing aaa-rated bonds.
These funding packages depended on making the responsible
stakeholder concept for emerging economiesthe idea that they
should assume more responsibility along with their growing power
work in hard, fnancial terms. Developing countries have been playing
an increasingly important role: they contributed more to the two
ida replenishment eorts than ever before and provided more than
half of the ibrds capital increase. The ibrd and the ifc earned revenues
each year, which they used to build capital, to cover the costs of
their administrative budgets (which the bank kept fat in real terms),
and even to make multibillion-dollar contributions to the ida. The
countries that received the idas investments supported fundraising
by sharing the World Banks focus on results and accountability,
including through the use of new lending tools that connect payments
to specifc achievements.
There is room for more innovation. With adjustments in the
terms oered to recipients and through the fow of repayments from
them, the ida should move toward greater self-sustainability. Just as
important, there are huge opportunities for the World Bank to cul-
tivate private investment. Many countries in Africa have enjoyed high
growth rates for a decade. They are taking steps to foster regional
integration and infrastructure, and the bank is working with them to
improve their business and investment climates. The banks Doing
Business report, for example, enables countries to assess how hospitable
they are to small enterprises.
Research Opportunities
Visiting Scholar
Te position is open to mid- and senior-level
scholars in any discipline working on any area
of the Middle East, with priority given to those
working on issues related to the Persian Gulf.
Post-Doctoral Fellow
CIRS ofers opportunities for recent PhD recipi-
ents in all disciplines working on the area of the
Middle East, with priority given to those working
on the Persian Gulf.
CIRS Grants
To contribute to the existing body of knowledge on
issues related to the Gulf region and the Middle
East, CIRS funds empirically-based, original
research projects on a variety of solicited topics.
Books
Te International Politics of the Persian Gulf
(2011, Syracuse University Press).
InnovationinIslam:TraditionsandContributions
(2011, University of California Press).
CIRS Research Initiatives
Sectarian Politics in the Persian Gulf
Tis research project looks at the evolving nature
and consequences of the intersection between
politics and ethnic and religious identity across
the Persian Gulf region.
Te Evolving Ruling Bargain in the Middle East
In light of tectonic changes underway in the
Middle East, this project examines some of the
emerging patterns of state-society relationships
and evolving sources of political legitimacy.
Food Security and Food Sovereignty in the
Middle East
Trough a solicited grant competition, this
initiative supports original research on the topic
of food security and food sovereignty in the
Middle East. Grant recipients meet regularly in
Qatar to share their fndings.
For more information, please email cirsresearch@georgetown.edu
Tel: +974 4457 8400 Fax: +974 4457 8401 http://cirs.georgetown.edu
Established in 2005, the Center for International
and Regional Studies at the Georgetown University
School of Foreign Service in Qatar is a premier
research institute devoted to the academic study of
regional and international issues through dialogue
and exchange of ideas, research and scholarship,
and engagement with scholars, opinion makers,
practitioners, and activists.
About CIRS
Call for Papers
CIRS invites manuscript submissions for its
Occasional Paper series. Papers dealing with issues
of relevance to the Persian Gulf are accepted from
all disciplines.
To submit a paper, or to request free copies of CIRS
materials, contact cirsresearch@georgetown.edu or
visit http://cirs.georgetown.edu/publications.
...aforumforscholarship
&researchoninternational
andregionalafairs...
082a_4_CIRS.indd 1 9/27/11 1:55:07 PM
To order: 800-343-4499 www.cup.columbia.edu cupblog.org
columbia university press
The Immigration Crucible
Transforming Race, Nation, and
the Limits of the Law
Philip Kretsedemas
This book recovers the complex-
ity of immigration and government
efforts to govern it. One of the most
exciting and well-written books on
the subject. Saskia Sassen, author
of Territory, Authority, Rights: From
Medieval to Global Assemblages
The Will to Survive
A History of Hungary
Bryan Cartledge
Though this is a political history, the
social and economic aspects are well
covered. Bryan Cartledge has ...
a perceptive eye and an elegant pen.
[The book] is set to become the stan-
dard work on Hungary.
Columbia/Hurst
The Pakistan-US
Conundrum
Jihadists, the Military and the
PeopleThe Struggle for Control
Yunas Samad
An important book that needs to be
read for its deep understanding of
Pakistans history and its analytical
brilliance on the countrys contempo-
rary social and political situation.
Kamran Asdar Ali, South Asia
Institute, University of Texas
Columbia/Hurst
Global Palestine
John Collins
A brilliant reading of the Palestine
question ... Finding inspiration in
the continuing Palestinian struggle
for justice, this book is a fne exam-
ple of intellectual precision and
political commitment.
Saree Makdisi, author of Palestine
Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation
Columbia/Hurst
When More Is Less
The International Project
in Afghanistan
Astri Suhrke
A timely, lively, and dispassionate
investigation into the causes and
consequences of the disappointing
modern history of peacebuilding in
Afghanistan. Michael Barnett,
George Washington University
Columbia/Hurst
China or Japan
Which Will Lead Asia?
Claude Meyer
[This] provocative and important
book ... should be required read-
ing for anyone interested in the
future of the world economys most
important region. Gerald Curtis,
Columbia University
Columbia/Hurst
34_Columbia.indd 1 1/26/12 3:11:31 PM
foreign affairs
.
As developing countries
rightly demand a
bigger say in how
the world is run, the
World Bank must
refect this change.
In 2009, the ifc created the ifc Asset Management Company,
which adds to the ifcs traditional model of raising money in bond
markets and then investing it. The amc
taps the substantial fnancial resources held
by sovereign wealth funds, pension funds,
and other institutional investors and channels
them to proftable investment opportunities
identifed by the ifc. The amc now totals
over $4 billion, almost $3 billion of which
comes from outside investors that have had
little exposure to Africa and other less rec-
ognized emerging markets. For now, these
investors are relying on the ifcs strong track record of combining
development with returns. Over time, their ranks will expand as they
become more familiar with these growth markets.
The World Bank has taken the lead in developing novel ways to
use fnance to tackle other global problems. Encouraged by former
U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, the bank raised over $6 bil-
lion from governments for new climate investment funds to help
countries improve energy eciency and technology, lower their
emissions, and protect themselves against climate change. These funds
have mobilized about $50 billion worth of projects in 45 developing
countries. As negotiators debate what a un green fund might look
like, the World Bank already has one up and running. The bank has
also brought fnancial innovation to bear on plans to develop medicines,
protect wildlife, lower the costs of humanitarian food and supplies,
and create natural-disaster insurance.
The banks approach is to crowd in others. The bank has multiplied
support for projects and benefted from each partners comparative
advantage. It has deepened its ties with regional development banks
(including several Arab funds and banks), private investors, govern-
ments, and foundations. The ifc, for its part, can work with commer-
cial banks and others to share risks, for example, by keeping trade fnance
fowing through operational partnerships with banks. The ifc is also
committing around $3 billion through about 180 private equity funds
in developing countries to build markets through which investors can
supply longer-term risk capital to owners of local companies. Over time,
Robert B. Zoellick
.
Volume 91 No. 2
the World Bank aims to build market infrastructure and experience,
whether for local currency bond markets, equities, or fnancing for
small and medium-sized companies.
promoti ng good governance
and preventi ng corruption
Promoting good governance and combating corruption are an
integral part of development. When I arrived at the bank, its anti-
corruption work was mired in frustration, suspicion, and confict. An
independent review panel headed by former U.S. Federal Reserve
Chair Paul Volcker provided an invaluable wiring diagram to enable
the banks integrity sta to work more eectively with feld operators,
clients, donors, and the banks own board of executive directors.
Yet the bank needs to do more than just investigate, prosecute,
and penalize those who engage in fraud and theft. In many resource-
rich countries, the primary challenge is for the government to use
income wisely, counter corruption, and broaden the benefts of growth.
Applying its experience, the bank needs to implement corruption-
prevention measures, improve transparency, and involve civil society
in supporting good governance. It also must help governments
increasingly, at the subnational levelstrengthen fnancial manage-
ment, procurement systems, auditors, and other checks.
The World Bank will need new tools to break through harder
obstacles. In 2010, the bank pushed through an agreement with the
regional development banks that makes sure that individuals and
companies found guilty of stealing from one of these banks are punished
by all. The banks integrity unit has introduced settlements for the
guilty that combine sanctions with restitution payments and contri-
butions to anticorruption groups. The Stolen Asset Recovery Initiative
is assisting governments in recovering funds stolen by leaders who
looted their countries Treasuries.
The bank also refers cases to national criminal authorities, and
although governments exercise prosecutorial discretion, those that
consistently fail to prosecute will jeopardize their relationship with
the bank. To support the investigators, prosecutors, judges, and others
who take on this often dangerous work, in 2010 the bank set up the
foreign affairs
.
International Corruption Hunters Alliance, a network of more than
200 anticorruption ocials from 134 countries. The bank is also
developing a fund to assist local citizens and civil-society groups that
support accountability.
democrati zi ng development
The World Bank does not have all the answers. When making
decisions that can have an enormous impact on peoples lives, it must
listen to those closest to the issues. One of the many messages of the
crowds that shook the Middle East in 2011 was that global economic
freedom must be combined with good governance, citizen voice, and
social accountability.
Inclusive and sustainable development depends on shifting from
an elite, top-down approach to one that democratizes development.
This means giving people the tools to gather data and better under-
stand development issues, along with opportunities to share insights.
Institutions resist opening up. Information is power. Opening up means
revealing mistakes and addressing critics, which is dicult, but it
ultimately makes institutions more eective. In the case of the World
Bank, making the organization accessible improves performance and
shows people what the bank does and how it works. Transparency is
the best antidote to conspiracy theories.
In 2010, the World Bank rolled out a new access-to-information
policy, which releases vast numbers of documents and gives the public
more information than ever before about the banks projects, its ana-
lytic and advisory activities, and the proceedings of its executive
board. Modeled on freedom-of-information programs in India
and the United States, the policy marks a groundbreaking change in
how the bank deals with information and is the most extensive such
policy of any multilateral organization.
The Open Data Initiative may turn out to be even more impor-
tant. Under this program, the bank is making thousands of data sets
freely available to anyone with an Internet connection. Anyone from
a Ph.D. student in Australia to a farmer in Kenya can now analyze
the banks data. In 2010, the Apps for Development competition
encouraged software developers around the globe to come up with new
Robert B. Zoellick
.
Volume 91 No. 2
usesforthiswealthofdata,andWorldBankresearchersarebuilding
softwareapplicationstofurtherincreasethedatasaccessibility.The
bankisalsocreatinganintegrityapptogivecitizensonlineaccessto
informationaboutthebanksprojectsandameansofinstantlyreport-
ingcorruptionrelatingtothem.Thebankplanstoworkwithcom-
munities to map their own social infrastructuresuch as health
clinics,schools,andwatersourcessovillagerscanholdocialsto
account.Thenextstepistoallowpeopletousehand-helddevices
to let the bank know, from any location, what is really going on
withitsprojects.
All these programs represent a very dierent model from the
bankknowsbestattitudeofthepast.RecognizingtheWorldBanks
eorts, last year the organization Publish What You Fund ranked
theidafrstamong58multilateralandbilateraldevelopmentagencies
fortransparency.
a more representati ve bank
Finally, as developing countries rightly demand a bigger say in
howtheworldisrun,theWorldBankmustrefectthischange.In
2010,thebankincreasedtherepresentationofdevelopingcountries
onitsboardofexecutivedirectorsfrom44percenttojustbelow
50 percent.Butsincetheboardrarelyvotes,theadditionofanew
board chair for sub-Saharan Africa was probably more important,
addinganothervoicearoundthetable.Somecountriesadvocatethat
controlbesplit50-50betweendevelopedanddevelopingcountries.
Thispreoccupationraisesthornyquestions:Whichcountriesbelong
inthedevelopingcategory?Asmorecountriesbecomedeveloped,
should 50 percent of the votes still be reserved for the remainder?
Shouldvotingpoweralsorefectcountriesenhancedcontributions
to the ida or other funds? Do these divisions reinforce a North-
Southlogicthatrefectsanoldparadigm?
Thebankmanagementsaimhasbeentobasevoiceandrepre-
sentation on how the bank does its work, starting with treating
clients with dignity and respect and better refecting the banks
membershipinitsworkforce.Ithelpstobelocal:ocesinmorethan
100countriesbringstaclosertoclientsandothershareholders.
12_Zoellick_pp66_78_Blues.indd 76 1/26/12 10:31 AM
foreign affairs
.
The banks employees come from 167 countries, and nearly two-
thirds of its sta members come from developing and transitional
states. Its chief economist, the Chinese scholar Justin Lin, is the frst
person from a developing country to hold that position. Fifty percent
of the banks senior executives are now women, and about 45 percent of
its senior executive hires come from developing countries.
The World Bank is also gradually expanding the global foot-
print of its eorts to share knowledge. It has built a center in
Nairobi that assists postconfict countries and a hub in Singapore
that focuses on urban and public-private infrastructure develop-
ment. As these institutional changes refect, development today is
as much about knowledge as lending, and knowledge needs to fow
south to south, east to west, from the grass roots to the corridors
of power, no longer limited by the old hierarchies.
beyond ai d
My experience before coming to the World Bank led me to
place a premium on results. The focus on outcomes may seem obvious,
but public policy assessments are often driven by intellectual debates,
political positioning, and current ideological fashions. International
organizations in particular can become so self-absorbed with process
and discussions that they overlook the vital role of eectiveness. A
focus on practical outcomes is especially important in public organi-
zations such as the World Bank, where checks and balances and
procedures and committees can stymie initiative. Accomplishments
build morale, support, accountability, and legitimacy.
The bank has made a concerted eort to become faster and more
fexible. Yet there is much more to do. Executives need to help their
teams connect the dots between the concerns of various stakeholders
(about safeguards, sound procurement practices, governments coop-
erativeness, and other issues) and the country counterparts whose
problems they are trying to solve. They need to continually learn and
improve, without letting process become paralysis.
Over the past fve years, the World Banks eorts to modernize
have been part of the larger drive to modernize multilateralism.
That push refects a world economy shifting toward multiple poles
Robert B. Zoellick
[7 8] foreign affairs
.
Volume 91 No. 2
of growth, an evolution that will boost opportunities, livelihoods,
and innovation. At the same time, the world will need a healthy
multilateral system to encourage more countries to tackle common
concerns with increased shared responsibilities.
Over time, the World Banks aim should be to help countries
move beyond aid. There will always be a need for humanitarian aid,
and for some time to come, poor and confict-riven countries will
require development assistance. The goal, however, should be to get
past dependency. The World Bank should help developing countries
create the conditionsthrough public health, education, and nutri-
tion, as well as fnancial investmentthat stimulate business, jobs,
productivity, and links to global supply and logistics chains. It can
assist with better governance, the rule of law, economic freedom,
environmental sustainability, and social accountability. All countries,
meanwhile, should open their markets to developing countries. And
all countries should tap the energies and genius of all their people,
especially girls and women, who represent an emerging source of
growth everywhere.
Much of the World Banks history has been associated with the
Third World. The Third World is an outdated concept. But devel-
opment is not. In fact, lessons of developmentjust like principles
of sound economicsare increasingly applicable to all countries.
Today, the world urgently needs to move beyond the economic crisis
and lay the foundations for a world beyond aid. To do so, the world
still needs the World Bank.
Sponsored Section
LEBANON 1
LEBANON
L
ast year seems so long ago. Through the first half
of 2011, Lebanon struggled to form a government
under Prime Minister Najib Mikati. But by early
2012, just six months after taking the reins, the
new cabinet was showing signs of getting to grips with
longstanding problems. Optimism abounds.
The phoenix: this is the image of Lebanon, said Information
Minister Walid Daouk. The Lebanese have gone through
very dificult moments and, every time, we have managed
to overcome them because of our eagerness to live. The
Lebanese have the same joy of life as the phoenix.
Non-Lebanese may feel bemused by the countrys ability to
combine seemingly incessant political turmoil with prosperity
and a vibrant lifestyle. But its all part of the
tradition. Lack of decision-making in the public
sector has led the private sector to take matters
into its own hands, Economy Minister Nicolas
Nahas explained.
Part of the problemif problem it beis
that Lebanon is the quintessential Middle East
melting pot; a regional microcosm that brings
together many of the various religious and ethnic
groups. In most neighboring countries, one
group or another dominates and crowds out the
minorities; Lebanon is the regions best shot at a
working democracy, alongside Israel. Some local
businessmen call the political bickering the cost
of democracy; others see it as a strength.
We are the interface of all these peopleSunnis
interacting with Shias, interacting with Christians,
interacting with Druze, all in one platformthis
doesnt exist anywhere else, said Tarek Khalife,
chairman of CreditBank.
Perhaps because of Lebanons deeply ingrained
tradition for commerce and finance, dating from
the Phoenicians and the Silk Road, the country has
proven adept at riding out twenty-first-century
economic crises.
This is Lebanon; The general public has a
tolerance for risk; they have lived through risk
so much that they dont overreact, Khalife said.
Rather than shying away from risks, he said,
Lebanese tend to minimize them. They dont buy houses with
a zero down payment, for example. Neither would banks lend
like that. This caution means that when a crisis comes along,
prompted by internal or external factors, things dont slam
to a halt. They just slow down a bit. Banks continue to lend,
and merchants and importers continue to invest and import,
Khalife said. All this creates a certain momentum. People look
around and see that things arent so bad. Restaurants and
hotels are still open. Occupancy may be lower but we can go
have a drink or lunch, and this keeps things rolling. Its like a
self-fulfilling prophecy.
Lebanon has been bufeted by unrest in neighboring Syria.
The countries have significant trade and investment links, so
much so that Alex Demirdijan, general manager
of Demco Steel, calls Syria our big brother. The
impact to date has been mainly economic, for
example reduced tourism, but that could change
if the situation in Syria deteriorates further.
Much of the resilience is underpinned by the
financial sector, which Freddie Baz, chief financial
oficer of Bank Audi, was only too happy to call
boring, with no short-term borrowing from the
market. Boring banks are retail banks whose
funding comes from their customer deposits,
Baz said. This is the most stable and least costly
type of funding.
Lebanese banks enjoy another advantage: serving
the countrys large and lucrative diaspora. The 4.2
million-person country has a labor force of some
1.5 million, but millions of Lebanese descendants
live around the world and many send money
to buy vacation homes in the old country.
Specifically, some 400,000 short-term expatriate
Lebanese professionals are working in the Gulf
region and maintain strong economic links with
home. Mazen Soueid, chief economist at BankMed,
explained that this group has an average annual
income of US$80,000 to US$100,000, compared
with US$10,000 inside Lebanon.
If you look around, you would think Lebanon is a
US$20,000 per capita country, exactly because of
this hidden, parallel labor force, Soueid said.
Sitting strategically at the heart of a region in turmoil, Lebanon is once again
rising like a phoenix as the new government prepares for billion-dollar
investments in telecommunications, oil, gas, and electric power, supported as
ever by a robust nancial sector.
Rising like a phoenix
Lebanon Foreign Affairs_report.indd 1 1/26/12 3:38 PM
Sponsored Section
2 LEBANON
Lebanese investors have a tradition of
recoursing to the banking sector for their
fnancing needs, which is often seen as easier
than going for fresh capital to the fnancial
markets and the stock exchange. Growth of
the Beirut market has been hampered by the
fact that many local companies are owned
by families that dont want to give up control,
while some companies such as MEA, Casino du
Liban, and telecom operators have not been
able to join the exchange because of a lack of
formal regulations to expedite the process.
Nevertheless, Ghaleb Mahmassani is optimistic
that plans to transform the ninety-year-old
exchange from a public institution into a joint
stock company and privatize it will lead to
greater fexibility, authority, and resources. New
legislation and an independent regulatory
commission, modeled on London and New York
exchanges, should boost investor confdence.
We are very confdent in the message that
this commission sends to national and foreign
investors: at last Lebanon has the tools, the
proper legislation to control and regulate the
fnancial markets, Mahmassani said. I think
the credibility exists because Lebanon has a
long tradition of fnancial activity, fnancial
reputation, and fnancial know-how.
Lebanese are pretty confdent about 2012. The International Monetary
Fund is looking to gross domestic product (GDP) growth of 3.5 percent,
up from 1.5 percent in 2011, while Finance Minister Mohammad Safadi
speaks of 4 percent.
Key driversin addition to a general economic recovery towards the 7
percent to 9 percent annual growth trend seen in the three years before
2010could be greater investment in infrastructure, plus an oil and
gas boom.
Prime Minister Najib Mikati has asked legislators to approve an ambitious
plan that hikes taxes, reducing the government defcit and enabling public
investment equivalent to 5.8 percent of GDP. Parliamentary approval
would constitute a major step
forward, given that Lebanon has
been without an annual budget since
2005. However, some analysts were
skeptical that the tax hikes would
win suf cient votes. That in turn
could jeopardize plans to tackle what
Nadim Kassar, general manager of
Fransabank, called Lebanons 1960s
infrastructure.
The solution, Kassar said, was
privatization, although this is
politically contentious. Instead of
fnancing the government, we would
rather fnance the private sector that
would build the infrastructure, he
said. The banks are liquid enough;
we can privatize roads, electricity, and telecommunications. All these
issues will make a diference for business and tourism. And it will cost the
government not a penny; it will even bring in revenue, because these
companies will pay taxes.
Theres also great potential for private investment in ofshore oil and gas,
now that the cabinet has approved legislation that paves the way for oil
exploration tenders. Lebanon, Cyprus, Turkey, and Israel are arguing about
the exact demarcation of national frontiers in the Mediterranean Sea, but
Energy and Water Minister Jibran Bassil said there was no impediment to
starting work in Lebanons undisputed areas, which industry experts put
at some 20,000 square kilometers.
Shaping up for
Growth in 2012
How would you describe CreditBank
in a nutshell?
Were one of the most active
commercial lenders. We ranked
fourteenth in the country by balance
sheet, but seventh or eighth by loan
portfolio. So we understand the value
of being productive.
You have fewer branches than
the larger banks, so whats your
competitive edge?
There are banks with a hundred
branches, but I disagree about the
need. Lebanon is not California; you
can cover it adequately with thirty.
We have basically two advantages
that I summarize as professional and
personal. We can be more responsive
[than larger banks]; were more fexible
and we dont try to ft clients into a
mold. And on the professional side
Im talking about market savvy. For
example, fve of the largest franchise
restaurants in Lebanon have grown up
with us. We know that sector. And a
startup naturally comes to us.
Tarek J. Khalife
Chairman & GM, CreditBank
Ghaleb Mahmassani
Acting Chairman,
Beirut Stock
Exchange
CreditBank is a little
atypical of the [Lebanese]
market. Were one of the
most active commercial
lenders.
Sponsored Section
LEBANON 3
Lebanons largest bank is expanding
throughout the region, leveraging its
expertise and cultural sensibility.
Traditional bank
seeks new pastures
W
ith over 150 branches inside and outside
Lebanon, the 180-year-old Bank Audi is the
countrys largest bank in terms of consolidated
assetsUS$ 28.7 billion at the end of the third quarter of
2011. A majority of stock is held by families in Lebanon,
Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia, with
Deutsche Bank owning almost 29 percent as Depositary
under the Banks GDR program. Shares are traded on the
Beirut exchange and the banks Global Depositary Receipts
are listed in London.
In recent years the bank has stepped up its process
of internationalization. There are already commercial,
investment, and private banking subsidiaries in France,
Switzerland, Monaco, Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Sudan, Saudi
Arabia, Qatar, and Gibraltar, plus a representative ofce in
Abu Dhabi. But Bank Audis new foothold in Turkey is seen as
being particularly signifcant.
Everybody thought it was impossible
to obtain (a license to operate in
Turkey), but we were the only ones
who believed it could be done, said
Bank Audi CEO Samir Hanna. We
built a solid case, we presented a
comprehensive business plan and
we succeeded. And because Turkeys
policy at the moment is to get closer
to the East, and because they liked the
idea of having a bank of our size and
reputation, they granted us the license.
Hanna said Bank Audi sees Turkey as a place where it can add
value and develop a business. When you think of any growth
potential, the potential to develop and build a franchise,
Turkey becomes the natural choice. In addition, Turkeys
population represents 24.3 percent of the consolidated Arab
Middle East and North Africa (MENA) population and its GDP
represents 34.2 percent of the consolidated Arab MENA GDP.
So you can imagine the potential there, not to mention the
fact that it is a very young country.
One strength in pursuing its international ambitions is
empathy for local cultures. In Egypt, we are an Egyptian
bank; we are a Jordanian bank in Jordan; we are a Syrian bank
in Syria; and we will be a Turkish bank in Turkey, Hanna said.
I believe that success will come from letting everybody, be
they clients or staf, feel that they are taking their business to,
or are working in, a Turkish bank.
A full-service bank at home, outside of Lebanon Bank Audi
preferentially targets export-oriented companies with a
sound cash fow, operating in non-volatile sectors. We want
to make sure that the loans we make will be paid back. We
are a traditional bank; we do not borrow funds to lend funds.
We take in savings deposits and we lend them out.
Hanna said that Bank Audi would like to expand further
among countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council, but
unfortunately it is not easy to obtain banking licenses there.
Samir Hanna
CEO, Bank Audi
Sponsored Section
4 LEBANON
A
s a small country with sparse natural resources, Lebanon
has long relied on its highly skilled and multilingual labor
force to gain an edge on regional competitors. This gives
Lebanon potential in areas like fnancial services, commerce,
design, IT, and some manufacturing niches. It also generates
revenues in an often-ignored way, by creating a highly
qualifed pool of workers who live abroad and send home
thousands of dollars every year.
Instead of exporting tangible goods and services, we export
brains, said Freddie Baz of Bank Audi.
Top concentrations are business, arts and sciences, architecture
and design, engineering, pharmacy, nursing, and medicine,
many with international accreditation and a signifcant presence
of foreign students, underlining the status of Lebanon and
particularly Beirut as a regional center of learning.
With globalization, its very important for a university to
open up to the outside world; thats how you stay on top of
the game, said Dr. Joseph Jabbra, president of the Lebanese
American University (LAU). One in fve of his 8,000 students
comes from outside of Lebanon, mainly from the Middle East
and North America. Almost 20 percent of degrees awarded
in the 20092010 academic year were masters or doctorates.
Equally impressive for a Mid-Eastern educational institution, no
less than 48 percent of students are female.
Jabbra sees his university very much as an instrument for
national and regional development: The challenge for
Lebanon is to fnd ways to send children to school, then to
university. Institutions like ours go out and raise funds to
provide an opportunity for those who are very bright but dont
have the means to get education at LAU. This year we gave
US$15 million in scholarships; we dont want our university to
become just an institution for rich people.
George Najjar, dean of the Suliman S. Olayan School of
Business at the American University of Beirut (AUB), is equally
concerned with quality. He aims to produce business leaders for
Lebanon and beyond who combine technical expertise with a
commitment to the public good: Values of community service
are deeply inculcated in the AUB student, Najjar said. The AUB
has strong ties with leading international institutions like the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Harvard Business
School, the London School of Economics, the Kellogg School of
Management, and Yale and Georgetown universities.
Brain power: a key Lebanese asset is being enhanced with a dynamic education
sector, and the presence of several world-class institutions.
Lessons well learned
Resource Group Holding (RGH) is a dynamic investment group with a broad portfolio of
businesses that capitalize on industry synergy to create added value.
RGH operates across the sectors of:
Security Printing Value Added Services
Identifcation Solutions Telecom Infrastructure
Banking & Payment Solutions Managed Services
Card-Based Solutions Real Estate Development
Elections Turn-key Projects Gaming & Entertainment
The Group has earned the trust of governments and top tier companies in the telecom
and banking sectors in over 50 countries across the Middle East, Africa, Turkey & CIS;
a vote of confdence for a partner you can rely on.
YOUR
TRUSTED
PARTNER
www.resourceholding.com
Final.indd 1 1/9/12 6:48 PM
Sponsored Section
LEBANON 5
Resource Group Holding (RGH) is a dynamic investment group with a broad portfolio of
businesses that capitalize on industry synergy to create added value.
RGH operates across the sectors of:
Security Printing Value Added Services
Identifcation Solutions Telecom Infrastructure
Banking & Payment Solutions Managed Services
Card-Based Solutions Real Estate Development
Elections Turn-key Projects Gaming & Entertainment
The Group has earned the trust of governments and top tier companies in the telecom
and banking sectors in over 50 countries across the Middle East, Africa, Turkey & CIS;
a vote of confdence for a partner you can rely on.
YOUR
TRUSTED
PARTNER
www.resourceholding.com
Final.indd 1 1/9/12 6:48 PM
6 LEBANON
Lebanon has huge potential; it can
become a pivotal point in the Middle
East, if not the pivotal point, as long
as there is domestic and regional
stability. I left Lebanon, I went to
Europe and the U.S., and I traveled
around the world. But if now Im back
in Beirut, its because I thought this
country was special, diferent. The
lifestyle, the nature of the Lebanese
people, and the deep respect we have
for human relations are not common
elsewhere in the world.
We always stick to our mission, which
comprises three elements dating back
to our roots. First is a commitment
to excellence in everything we do.
Second is inclusiveness: we are a
nondenominational school; we dont
diferentiate on the basis of religion or
socioeconomic status. The only thing
we care about is whether or not the
student is qualifed. And third is the
education of the whole person. We
pay attention to the development of
the individual.
This is a wonderful country; I
wouldnt have stayed here if I didnt
love it. Its very open to visitors and
could be a great holiday destination
if it were packaged properly. The
infrastructure is geared towards the
high-end tourists, which is great, but
90 percent of people arent in that
high-spending 10 percent. We should
build some hotels for the backpackers
and the middle-class Europeans who
want to spend a couple weeks but
cant aford US$500 a night.
Alex Demirdijan
General Manager, Demco
Joseph Jabbra, Ph.D.
President, LAU
Ciaran ONeil
General Manager, Beirut Duty Free
COMPANIES TO WATCH
Demco Steel Industries
A leading steel trader and stockholder
dating from 1925, now a major
supplier to construction and
infrastructure projects in Lebanon
and the Middle East.
Lebanese American University
A leading institute that started as a
womens college in 1835. Accredited by
the Commission on Institutions of Higher
Education of the New England Association
of Schools and Colleges (CIHE-NEASC).
Beirut Duty Free
A joint venture between Phoenicia
Trading Afro Asia and Aer Rianta
International Middle East, run by
Ciaran ONeil, an Irish expatriate.
Sponsored Section
LEBANON 7
USA Ofce
1050 Connecticut Avenue, NW
10th oor, Suite 1000
Washington, DC 20036 - USA
Tel +1 202 772 1090
info@peninsula-press.com
Spain Ofce
Paseo de la Castellana,
95. 15 Planta
28046 Madrid - Spain
Tel +34 91 418 50 32
www.peninsula-press.com
Editor-in-Chief Stella Klauhs
Regional Director Carolina Mateo
Project Director Eileen Park
Research Director Kevin Winters
Editorial Assistant Oana Baloi
Writer Brian Nicholson
Creative Director Marta Conceio
Illustration Andr Kano
Businessmen in a small country like Lebanon
must pick their niches and leverage their
advantages. One great example of this is
Hisham Itani, chairman and CEO of Resource
Group Holding (RGH), a Beirut-based
company that started as a security printing
house some 40 years ago.
High-tech solution
provider, close to the client
R
GH is an investment group with a broad portfolio of
businesses serving the Middle East, Africa, and Eurasia. The
groups main activities cover diferent elements of the value
chain and capitalize on high-tech solutions to create value.
Our solutions currently span across ten core businesses managed by
separate entities under RGH, with focus on the telecommunications,
fnancial, and government sectors, said Itani.
RGHs products and services portfolio includes security printing, smartcard
technologies, identifcation and payments solutions, mobile value-added
services (VAS), turnkey elections projects, telecom infrastructure and managed
services, real estate development, gaming, and entertainment.
Perhaps the best-known subsidiary is Inkript, the security printing and
smartcard provider, which started as a local printing house and developed
into a key regional player that leverages on manufacturing expertise and the
capability to develop and integrate complex technical solutions.
We try to remain close to our clients in order to understand their needs and
build long and trusted partnerships, Itani said. Businesses have specifc
requirements that can only be served with customized solutions. For this
purpose, we operate through a comprehensive business model. First
we assess our customers needs and identify the technical and business
requirements; then we develop the appropriate solution and proceed with
integration and deployment. The approach and working model of RGH are
best highlighted in the way the group supported certain African countries in
crossing to the latest technologies and rolling out highly secure electronic
and biometric passports. In some instances, we have established a portfolio
of build-operate-transfer (BOT) operations in agreement with related
governments for the turnkey setup and management of production centers
for electronic IDs and electronic passports, Itani said.
RGH is a fast-growing group and its expansion has been driven by the desire
to bring advanced technologies and innovative solutions to the regions it
serves. The groups reach extends to emerging and high-growth markets
in the Middle East, Africa, Turkey, and countries of the Commonwealth of
Independent States (CIS).
In the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa, RGH capitalized on its extensive
network and relations with established Lebanese expatriates and local
partners to overcome cultural barriers and adapt to requirements specifc to
this region. The groups strategy to expand its footprint in Europe consists of
establishing partnerships with technology-based companies. The planned
evolution for RGH will be to associate with one of our main technology
partners in Europe, either through a partnership or a share swap, Itani said.
Lebanons telecom infrastructure is relatively
underdeveloped. Isnt that a disadvantage?
The technical and language skills of the Lebanese
labor force largely offset that. If you go to
Dubai, for example, you have to import almost
all the skills set, and thus the human costs are
much higher. Many technology providers such
as Ericsson, Nokia Siemens, Cisco, Tellabs, and
others have made Lebanon a key hub to support
their regional operations in countries like Turkey,
Dubai, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and some African
markets.
People are speaking about privatization of the
IT sector.
Any public service costs much more than the
same service provided privately, and is of lower
quality. But the national interest dictates that you
cannot have privatization without securing three
main elements: a body to regulate the entire
system, a legal framework to protect consumer
rights, and an enforceable law.
Hisham Itani
Chairman & CEO,
Resource Group
Holdings
Sponsored Section
Sponsored Section
8 LEBANON
Clear and Present Safety
The United States Is More Secure
Than Washington Thinks
Micah Zenko and Michael A. Cohen
Micah Zenko is a Fellow in the Center for Preventive Action at the
Council on Foreign Relations. Michael A. Cohen is a Fellow at
the Century Foundation.
[79]
LastAugust, the Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney
performed what has become a quadrennial rite of passage in American
presidential politics: he delivered a speech to the annual convention
of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. His message was rooted in another
grand American tradition: hyping foreign threats to the United States.
It is wishful thinking, Romney declared, that the world is becoming
a safer place. The opposite is true. Consider simply the jihadists, a near-
nuclear Iran, a turbulent Middle East, an unstable Pakistan, a delusional
North Korea, an assertive Russia, and an emerging global power
called China. No, the world is not becoming safer.
Not long after, U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta echoed
Romneys statement. In a lecture last October, Panetta warned of
threats arising from terrorism to nuclear proliferation; from
rogue states to cyber attacks; from revolutions in the Middle East,
to economic crisis in Europe, to the rise of new powers such as
China and India. All of these changes represent security, geopo-
litical, economic, and demographic shifts in the international order
that make the world more unpredictable, more volatile and, yes,
more dangerous. General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Sta, concurred in a recent speech, arguing that
the number and kinds of threats we face have increased signif-
cantly. And U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reinforced
13_Zenko_Cohen_pp79_93.indd 79 1/17/12 3:00 PM
[80] foreignaffairs
.
Volume91No.2
the point by claiming that America resides today in a very complex,
dangerous world.
Within the foreign policy elite, there exists a pervasive belief that the
postCold War world is a treacherous place, full of great uncertainty
and grave risks. A 2009 survey conducted by the Pew Research Center
for the People and the Press found that 69 percent of members of the
Council on Foreign Relations believed that for the United States at
that moment, the world was either as dangerous as or more dangerous
than it was during the Cold War. Similarly, in 2008, the Center for
American Progress surveyed more than 100 foreign policy experts and
found that 70 percent of them believed that the world was becoming
more dangerous. Perhaps more than any other idea, this belief shapes
debates on U.S. foreign policy and frames the publics understanding of
international aairs.
There is just one problem. It is simply wrong. The world that the
United States inhabits today is a remarkably safe and secure place. It
is a world with fewer violent conficts and greater political freedom
than at virtually any other point in human history. All over the world,
people enjoy longer life expectancy and greater economic opportunity
than ever before. The United States faces no plausible existential threats,
no great-power rival, and no near-term competition for the role of
global hegemon. The U.S. military is the worlds most powerful, and
even in the middle of a sustained downturn, the U.S. economy remains
among one of the worlds most vibrant and adaptive. Although the
United States faces a host of international challenges, they pose little
risk to the overwhelming majority of American citizens and can be
managed with existing diplomatic, economic, and, to a much lesser
extent, military tools.
This reality is barely refected in U.S. national security strategy or in
American foreign policy debates. President Barack Obamas most
recent National Security Strategy aspires to a world in which America
is stronger, more secure, and is able to overcome our challenges while
appealing to the aspirations of people around the world. Yet that is
basically the world that exists today. The United States is the worlds
most powerful nation, unchallenged and secure. But the countrys
political and policy elite seems unwilling to recognize this fact, much
less integrate it into foreign policy and national security decision-making.
foreignaffairs
.
March/April2012 [81 ]
The disparity between foreign threats and domestic threat-
mongering results from a confuence of factors. The most obvious
and important is electoral politics. Hyping dangers serves the interests
of both political parties. For Republicans, who have long benefted
from attacking Democrats for their alleged
weakness in the face of foreign threats,
there is little incentive to tone down the
rhetoric; the notion of a dangerous world
plays to perhaps their greatest political
advantage. For Democrats, who are fearful
of being cast as feckless, acting and sounding
tough is a shield against gop attacks and an
insurance policy in case a challenge to the
United States materializes into a genuine
threat. Warnings about a dangerous world
also beneft powerful bureaucratic interests. The specter of looming
dangers sustains and justifes the massive budgets of the military and
the intelligence agencies, along with the national security infrastruc-
ture that exists outside governmentdefense contractors, lobbying
groups, think tanks, and academic departments.
There is also a pernicious feedback loop at work. Because of
the chronic exaggeration of the threats facing the United States,
Washington overemphasizes military approaches to problems (in-
cluding many that could best be solved by nonmilitary means). The
militarization of foreign policy leads, in turn, to further dark warnings
about the potentially harmful eects of any eort to rebalance U.S.
national security spending or trim the massive military budget
warnings that are inevitably bolstered by more threat exaggeration.
Last fall, General Norton Schwartz, the U.S. Air Force chief of sta,
said that defense cuts that would return military spending to its 2007
level would undermine the militarys ability to protect the nation
and could create dire consequences. Along the same lines, Panetta
warned that the same reductions would invite aggression from
enemies. These are a puzzling statements given that the U.S. defense
budget is larger than the next 14 countries defense budgets combined
and that the United States still maintains weapons systems designed
to fght an enemy that disappeared 20 years ago.
In the United States,
the chances of dying
from a terrorist
attack or in a military
confict have fallen
almost to zero.
[82] foreignaffairs
.
Volume91No.2
Of course, threat infation is not new. During the Cold War, although
the United States faced genuine existential threats, American political
leaders nevertheless hyped smaller threats or confated them with
larger ones. Today, there are no dangers to the United States remotely
resembling those of the Cold War era, yet policymakers routinely
talk in the alarmist terms once used to describe superpower confict.
Indeed, the mindset of the United States in the post-9/11 world was
best (albeit crudely) captured by former Vice President Dick Cheney.
While in oce, Cheney promoted the idea that the United States
must prepare for even the most remote threat as though it were certain
to occur. The journalist Ron Suskind termed this belief the one
percent doctrine, a reference to what Cheney called the one percent
chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al Qaeda build or develop
a nuclear weapon. According to Suskind, Cheney insisted that the
United States must treat such a remote potential threat as a certainty
in terms of our response.
Such hair-trigger responsiveness is rarely replicated outside the realm
of national security, even when the government confronts problems that
cause Americans far more harm than any foreign threat. According to
an analysis by the budget expert Linda Bilmes and the economist Joseph
Stiglitz, in the ten years since 9/11, the combined direct and indirect
costs of the U.S. response to the murder of almost 3,000 of its citizens
have totaled more than $3 trillion. A study by the Urban Institute, a
nonpartisan think tank, estimated that during an overlapping period,
from 2000 to 2006, 137,000 Americans died prematurely because they
lacked health insurance. Although the federal government maintains
robust health insurance programs for older and poor Americans, its
response to a national crisis in health care during that time paled in
comparison to its response to the far less deadly terrorist attacks.
Rather than Cheneys one percent doctrine, what the United
States actually needs is a 99 percent doctrine: a national security
strategy based on the fact that the United States is a safe and well-
protected country and grounded in the reality that the opportunities
for furthering U.S. interests far exceed the threats to them. Fully
comprehending the world as it is today is the best way to keep the
United States secure and resistant to the overreactions that have
defned its foreign policy for far too long.
foreignaffairs
.
March/April2012 [83]
better than ever
The United States, along with the rest of the world, currently
faces a period of economic and political uncertainty. But consider four
long-term global trends that underscore just how misguided the constant
fear-mongering in U.S. politics is: the falling prevalence of violent
confict, the declining incidence of terrorism, the spread of political
freedom and prosperity, and the global improvement in public health.
In 1992, there were 53 armed conficts raging in 39 countries around the
world; in 2010, there were 30 armed conficts in 25 countries. Of
the latter, only four have resulted in at least 1,000 battle-related deaths
and can therefore be classifed as wars, according to the Uppsala
Confict Data Program: the conficts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan,
and Somalia, two of which were started by the United States.
Today, wars tend to be low-intensity conficts that, on average, kill
about 90 percent fewer people than did violent struggles in the 1950s.
Indeed, the frst decade of this century witnessed fewer deaths from war
than any decade in the last century. Meanwhile, the worlds great powers
have not fought a direct confict in more than 60 yearsthe longest
period of major power peace in centuries, as the Human Security
Report Project puts it. Nor is there much reason for the United States to
fear such a war in the near future: no state currently has the capabilities
or the inclination to confront the United States militarily.
Much of the fear that suuses U.S. foreign policy stems from the
trauma of 9/11. Yet although the tactic of terrorism remains a scourge in
localized conficts, between 2006 and 2010, the total number of terrorist
attacks declined by almost 20 percent, and the number of deaths caused
by terrorism fell by 35 percent, according to the U.S. State Department.
In 2010, more than three-quarters of all victims of terrorismmeaning
deliberate, politically motivated violence by nonstate groups against
noncombatant targetswere injured or killed in the war zones of
Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Somalia. Of the 13,186 people killed by
terrorist attacks in 2010, only 15, or 0.1 percent, were U.S. citizens. In most
places todayand especially in the United Statesthe chances of dying
from a terrorist attack or in a military confict have fallen almost to zero.
As violence and war have abated, freedom and democratic gover-
nance have made great gains. According to Freedom House, there were
[84] foreignaffairs
.
Volume91No.2
69 electoral democracies at the end of the Cold War; today, there are
117. And during that time, the number of autocracies declined from
62 to 48. To be sure, in the process of democratizing, states with weak
political institutions can be more prone to near-term instability, civil
wars, and interstate confict. Nevertheless, over time, democracies tend
to have healthier and better-educated citizens, almost never go to war
with other democracies, and are less likely to fght nondemocracies.
Economic bonds among states are also accelerating, even in the face
of a sustained global economic downturn. Today, 153 countries belong to
the World Trade Organization and are bound
by its dispute-resolution mechanisms. Thanks
to lowered trade barriers, exports now make
up more than 30 percent of gross world prod-
uct, a proportion that has tripled in the past
40 years. The United States has seen its exports
to the worlds fastest-growing economies
increase by approximately 500 percent over
the past decade. Currency fows have exploded
as well, with $4 trillion moving around the
world in foreign exchange markets every day.
Remittances, an essential instrument for reducing poverty in developing
countries, have more than tripled in the past decade, to more than
$440 billion each year. Partly as a result of these trends, poverty is on the
decline: in 1981, half the people living in the developing world survived
on less than $1.25 a day; today, that fgure is about one-sixth. Like
democratization, economic development occasionally brings with it
signifcant costs. In particular, economic liberalization can strain the
social safety net that supports a societys most vulnerable populations
and can exacerbate inequalities. Still, from the perspective of the United
States, increasing economic interdependence is a net positive because
trade and foreign direct investment between countries generally corre-
late with long-term economic growth and a reduced likelihood of war.
A fnal trend contributing to the relative security of the United
States is the improvement in global health and well-being. People in
virtually all countries, and certainly in the United States, are living longer
and healthier lives. In 2010, the number of people who died from aids-
related causes declined for the third year in a row. Tuberculosis rates
As the threat from
transnational terrorist
groups dwindles, the
United States also
faces few risks from
other states.
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For membership information, please contact:
William D. Pederson LSU Shreveport One University Place Shreveport, LA 71115
Phone: 318-797-5138 Email: william.pederson@lsus.edu
The Association of Third World Studies (ATWS) is now the largest
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.
continue to fall, as do the rates of polio and malaria. Child mortality
has plummeted worldwide, thanks in part to expanded access to health
care, sanitation, and vaccines. In 1970, the global child mortality rate
(deaths of children under fve per 1,000) was 141; in 2010, it was 57. In
1970, global average life expectancy was 59, and U.S. life expectancy
was 70. Today, the global fgure is just under 70, and the U.S. fgure is
79. These vast improvements in health and well-being contribute to
the global trend toward security and safety because countries with
poor human development are more war-prone.
phantom menace
Noneof this is meant to suggest that the United States faces no major
challenges today. Rather, the point is that the problems confronting
the country are manageable and pose minimal risks to the lives of the
overwhelming majority of Americans. None of themseparately or
in combinationjustifes the alarmist rhetoric of policymakers and
politicians or should lead to the conclusion that Americans live in a
dangerous world.
Take terrorism. Since 9/11, no security threat has been hyped more.
Considering the horrors of that day, that is not surprising. But the
result has been a level of fear that is completely out of proportion to
both the capabilities of terrorist organizations and the United States
vulnerability. On 9/11, al Qaeda got tragically lucky. Since then, the
United States has been preparing for the one percent chance (and
likely even less) that it might get lucky again. But al Qaeda lost its safe
haven after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, and further
military, diplomatic, intelligence, and law enforcement eorts have
decimated the organization, which has essentially lost whatever ability
it once had to seriously threaten the United States.
According to U.S. ocials, al Qaedas leadership has been reduced
to two top lieutenants: Ayman al-Zawahiri and his second-in-command,
Abu Yahya al-Libi. Panetta has even said that the defeat of al Qaeda is
within reach. The near collapse of the original al Qaeda organization
is one reason why, in the decade since 9/11, the U.S. homeland has
not suered any large-scale terrorist assaults. All subsequent attempts
have failed or been thwarted, owing in part to the incompetence of their
[86] foreignaffairs
.
Volume91No.2
perpetrators. Although there are undoubtedly still some terrorists who
wish to kill Americans, their dreams will likely continue to be frustrated
by their own limitations and by the intelligence and law enforcement
agencies of the United States and its allies.
As the threat from transnational terrorist groups dwindles, the
United States also faces few risks from other states. China is the most
obvious potential rival to the United States, and there is little doubt
that Chinas rise will pose a challenge to U.S. economic interests.
Moreover, there is an unresolved debate among Chinese political and
military leaders about Chinas proper global role, and the lack of trans-
parency from Chinas senior leadership about its long-term foreign
policy objectives is a cause for concern. However, the present security
threat to the U.S. mainland is practically nonexistent and will remain
so. Even as China tries to modernize its military, its defense spending
foreignaffairs
.
is still approximately one-ninth that of the United States. In 2012, the
Pentagon will spend roughly as much on military research and devel-
opment alone as China will spend on its entire military.
While China clumsily fexes its muscles in the Far East by threaten-
ing to deny access to disputed maritime resources, a recent Pentagon
report noted that Chinas military ambitions remain dominated by
regional contingencies and that the Peoples Liberation Army has made
little progress in developing capabilities that extend global reach or
power projection. In the coming years, China will enlarge its regional
role, but this growth will only threaten U.S. interests if Washington
attempts to dominate East Asia and fails to consider Chinas legitimate
regional interests. It is true that Chinas neighbors sometimes fear that
China will not resolve its disputes peacefully, but this has compelled
Asian countries to cooperate with the United States, maintaining
bilateral alliances that together form a strong security architecture and
limit Chinas room to maneuver.
The strongest arguments made by those warning of Chinese infu-
ence revolve around economic policy. The list of complaints includes
a host of Chinese policies, from intellectual property theft and currency
manipulation to economic espionage and domestic subsidies. Yet
none of those is likely to lead to direct confict with the United States
beyond the competition inherent in international trade, which does not
produce zero-sum outcomes and is constrained by dispute-resolution
mechanisms, such as those of the World Trade Organization. If any-
thing, Chinas export-driven economic strategy, along with its large
reserves of U.S. Treasury bonds, suggests that Beijing will continue
to prefer a strong United States to a weak one.
nuclear fear
It is a matter of faith among many American politicians that Iran
is the greatest danger now facing the country. But if that is true, then
the United States can breathe easy: Iran is a weak military power.
According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Irans
military forces have almost no modern armor, artillery, aircraft or ma-
jor combat ships, and un sanctions will likely obstruct the purchase
of high-technology weapons for the foreseeable future.
[88] foreignaffairs
.
Volume91No.2
Tehrans stated intention to project its interests regionally through
military or paramilitary forces has made Iran its own worst enemy.
Irans neighbors are choosing to balance against the Islamic Republic
rather than fall in line behind its leadership. In 2006, Irans favorability
rating in Arab countries stood at nearly 80 percent; today, it is under
30 percent. Like Chinas neighbors in East Asia, the Gulf states have
responded to Irans belligerence by participating in an emerging regional
security arrangement with the United States, which includes advanced
conventional weapons sales, missile defenses, intelligence sharing, and
joint military exercises, all of which have further isolated Iran.
Of course, the gravest concerns about Iran focus on its nuclear
activities. Those fears have led to some of the most egregiously alarm-
ist rhetoric: at a Republican national security debate in November,
Romney claimed that an Iranian nuclear weapon is the greatest
threat the world faces. But it remains unclear whether Tehran has
even decided to pursue a bomb or has merely decided to develop a
turnkey capability. Either way, Irans leaders have been suciently
warned that the United States would respond with overwhelming
force to the use or transfer of nuclear weapons. Although a nuclear
Iran would be troubling to the region, the United States and its allies
would be able to contain Tehran and deter its aggressionand the
threat to the U.S. homeland would continue to be minimal.
Overblown fears of a nuclear Iran are part of a more generalized
American anxiety about the continued potential of nuclear attacks.
Obamas National Security Strategy claims that the American people
face no greater or more urgent danger than a terrorist attack with a
nuclear weapon. According to the document, international peace
and security is threatened by proliferation that could lead to a nuclear
exchange. Indeed, since the end of the Cold War, the risk of a nuclear
attack has increased.
If the context is a state-against-state nuclear confict, the latter
assertion is patently false. The demise of the Soviet Union ended the
greatest potential for international nuclear confict. China, with only
72 intercontinental nuclear missiles, is eminently deterrable and not a
credible nuclear threat; it has no answer for the United States second-
strike capability and the more than 2,000 nuclear weapons with
which the United States could strike China.
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NO ONES WORLD
The West, the Rising Rest, and the Coming Global Turn
Charles A. Kupchan
A refreshingly sober, clear-eyed, and controversial take on
what the emerging world might really look like.
Robert Kagan, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution
and author of Dangerous Nation
INEQUALITY AND INSTABILITY
A Study of the World Economy Just Before the Great Crisis
James K. Galbraith
Galbraith and colleagues develop a powerful new measure of global
inequality trends and show how it can be used to shed new light on
everything from economic growth to voter turnout. e result is a
truly pathbreaking work of scholarship.
Barry Eichengreen, author of Exorbitant Privilege
THE COMING PROSPERITY
How Entrepreneurs Are Transforming the Global Economy
Philip Auerswald
A eld guide to being a builder, an architect, a prime mover of the next
global economy. One thats not just optimized for the industrial age
pursuit of more, bigger, faster, cheaper, but for fundamentally better in
terms that matter to humans.
Umair Haque, author of e New Capitalist Manifesto
THE RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT
The Promise of Stopping Mass Atrocities in Our Time
Jared Genser and Irwin Cotler
With an Introduction by Desmond Tutu and Vaclav Havel
is rich and authoritative collection of essays provides a
superb tour dhorizon of the subject.
William Schabas, Professor of International Law,
Middlesex University London
TERROR, SECURITY, AND MONEY
Balancing the Risks, Benets, and Costs of
Homeland Security
John Mueller and Mark G. Stewart
If you wonder whether airport security really makes sense, or how
much is enough in protecting against attacks, consider the calm and
convincing case [Mueller and Stewart] lay out in this book.
e Atlantic
New from
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088b_9_OxfordUP.indd 1 1/24/12 3:59:20 PM
foreignaffairs
.
In the past decade, Cheney and other one-percenters have fre-
quently warned of the danger posed by loose nukes or uncontrolled
fssile material. In fact, the threat of a nuclear device ending up in the
hands of a terrorist group has diminished markedly since the early
1990s, when the Soviet Unions nuclear arsenal was dispersed across all
of Russias 11 time zones, all 15 former Soviet
republics, and much of eastern Europe. Since
then, cooperative U.S.-Russian eorts have
resulted in the substantial consolidation of
those weapons at far fewer sites and in com-
prehensive security upgrades at almost all the
facilities that still possess nuclear material or
warheads, making the possibility of theft
or diversion unlikely. Moreover, the lessons
learned from securing Russias nuclear arsenal are now being applied
in other countries, under the framework of Obamas April 2010 Nu-
clear Security Summit, which produced a global plan to secure all
nuclear materials within four years. Since then, participants in the plan,
including Chile, Mexico, Ukraine, and Vietnam, have fulflled more
than 70 percent of the commitments they made at the summit.
Pakistan represents another potential source of loose nukes. The
United States military strategy in Afghanistan, with its reliance on
drone strikes and cross-border raids, has actually contributed to instabil-
ity in Pakistan, worsened U.S. relations with Islamabad, and potentially
increased the possibility of a weapon falling into the wrong hands.
Indeed, Pakistani fears of a U.S. raid on its nuclear arsenal have report-
edly led Islamabad to disperse its weapons to multiple sites, transporting
them in unsecured civilian vehicles. But even in Pakistan, the chances of
a terrorist organization procuring a nuclear weapon are infnitesimally
small. The U.S. Department of Energy has provided assistance to
improve the security of Pakistans nuclear arsenal, and successive senior
U.S. government ocials have repeated what former Secretary of
Defense Robert Gates said in January 2010: that the United States is
very comfortable with the security of Pakistans nuclear weapons.
A more recent bogeyman in national security debates is the threat
of so-called cyberwar. Policymakers and pundits have been warning
for more than a decade about an imminent cyberPearl Harbor or
Washington should
not assume that
every problem in
the world demands
a U.S. response.
[90] foreignaffairs
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Volume91No.2
cyber-9/11. In June 2011, then Deputy Defense Secretary William
Lynn said that bits and bytes can be as threatening as bullets and
bombs. And in September 2011, Admiral Mike Mullen, then chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Sta, described cyberattacks as an existential
threat that actually can bring us to our knees.
Although the potential vulnerability of private businesses and
government agencies to cyberattacks has increased, the alleged threat
of cyberwarfare crumbles under scrutiny. No cyberattack has resulted
in the loss of a single U.S. citizens life. Reports of kinetic-like cyber-
attacks, such as one on an Illinois water plant and a North Korean
attack on U.S. government servers, have proved baseless. Pentagon
networks are attacked thousands of times a day by individuals and
foreign intelligence agencies; so, too, are servers in the private sector.
But the vast majority of these attacks fail wherever adequate safeguards
have been put in place. Certainly, none is even vaguely comparable
to Pearl Harbor or 9/11, and most can be oset by commonsense
prevention and mitigation eorts.
a new approach
Defenders of the status quo might contend that chronic threat
infation and an overmilitarized foreign policy have not prevented the
United States from preserving a high degree of safety and security and
therefore are not pressing problems. Others might argue that although
the world might not be dangerous now, it could quickly become so
if the United States grows too sanguine about global risks and reduces
its military strength. Both positions underestimate the costs and risks
of the status quo and overestimate the need for the United States to
rely on an aggressive military posture driven by outsized fears.
Since the end of the Cold War, most improvements in U.S. secu-
rity have not depended primarily on the countrys massive military,
nor have they resulted from the constantly expanding defnition of
U.S. national security interests. The United States deserves praise
for promoting greater international economic interdependence and
open markets and, along with a host of international and regional
organizations and private actors, more limited credit for improving
global public health and assisting in the development of democratic
foreignaffairs
.
March/April2012 [91 ]
governance. But although U.S. military strength has occasionally con-
tributed to creating a conducive environment for positive change,
those improvements were achieved mostly through the work of civilian
agencies and nongovernmental actors in the
private and nonproft sectors. The record of
an overgrown postCold War U.S. military
is far more mixed. Although some U.S.-led
military eorts, such as the nato interven-
tion in the Balkans, have contributed to safer
regional environments, the U.S.-led wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq have weakened regional
and global security, leading to hundreds of
thousands of casualties and refugee crises (according to the Oce of
the un High Commissioner for Refugees, 45 percent of all refugees
today are feeing the violence provoked by those two wars). Indeed,
overreactions to perceived security threats, mainly from terrorism,
have done signifcant damage to U.S. interests and threaten to weaken
the global norms and institutions that helped create and sustain the
current era of peace and security. None of this is to suggest that
the United States should stop playing a global role; rather, it should
play a dierent role, one that emphasizes soft power over hard power
and inexpensive diplomacy and development assistance over expensive
military buildups.
Indeed, the most lamentable cost of unceasing threat exaggeration
and a focus on military force is that the main global challenges facing
the United States today are poorly resourced and given far less atten-
tion than sexier problems, such as war and terrorism. These include
climate change, pandemic diseases, global economic instability, and
transnational criminal networksall of which could serve as catalysts
to severe and direct challenges to U.S. security interests. But these
concerns are less visceral than alleged threats from terrorism and
rogue nuclear states. They require long-term planning and occasionally
painful solutions, and they are not constantly hyped by well-fnanced
interest groups. As a result, they are given short shrift in national
security discourse and policymaking.
To avoid further distorting U.S. foreign policy and to take advantage
of todays relative security and stability, policymakers need to not only
The American people
have long embraced the
idea that their country
should not be the
worlds policeman.
[92] foreignaffairs
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Volume91No.2
respond to a 99 percent world but also solidify it. They should start by
strengthening the global architecture of international institutions and
norms that can promote U.S. interests and ensure that other countries
share the burden of maintaining global peace and security. International
institutions such as the un (and its aliated agencies, such as the Inter-
national Atomic Energy Agency), regional organizations (the African
Union, the Organization of American States, the European Union,
and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations), and international
fnancial institutions can formalize and reinforce norms and rules that
regulate state behavior and strengthen global cooperation, provide
legitimacy for U.S. diplomatic eorts, and oer access to areas of the
world that the United States cannot obtain unilaterally.
American leadership must be commensurate with U.S. interests
and the nature of the challenges facing the country. The United
States should not take the lead on every issue or assume that every
problem in the world demands a U.S. response. In the majority of
cases, the United States should lead from behindor from the side,
or slightly in the frontbut rarely, if ever, by itself. That approach
would win broad public support. According to the Chicago Council
on Global Aairs most recent survey of U.S. public opinion on
international aairs, less than ten percent of Americans want the
country to continue to be the pre-eminent world leader in solving
international problems. The American people have long embraced
the idea that their country should not be the worlds policeman; for
just as long, politicians from both parties have expressed that sentiment
as a platitude. The time has come to act on that idea.
If the main challenges in a 99 percent world are transnational in
nature and require more development, improved public health, and
enhanced law enforcement, then it is crucial that the United States
maintain a sharp set of nonmilitary national security tools. American
foreign policy needs fewer people who can jump out of airplanes and
more who can convene roundtable discussions and lead negotiations.
But owing to cuts that began in the 1970s and accelerated signifcantly
during its reorganization in the 1990s, the U.S. Agency for Interna-
tional Development (usaid) has been reduced to a hollow shell of its
former self. In 1990, the agency had 3,500 permanent employees. Today,
it has just over 2,000 staers, and the vast majority of its budget is
foreignaffairs
.
distributed via contractors and nongovernmental organizations. Mean-
while, with 30,000 employees and a $50 billion budget, the State
Departments resources pale in comparison to those of the Pentagon,
which has more than 1.6 million employees and a budget of more than
$600 billion. More resources and attention must be devoted to all
elements of nonmilitary state powernot only usaid and the State
Department but also the Millennium Challenge Corporation, the
National Endowment for Democracy, and a host of multilateral insti-
tutions that deal with the underlying causes of localized instability and
ameliorate their eects at a relatively low cost. As U.S. General John
Allen recently noted, In many respects, usaids eorts can do as much
over the long termto prevent confict as the deterrent eect of a car-
rier strike group or a marine expeditionary force. Allen ought to know:
he commands the 100,000 U.S. troops fghting in Afghanistan.
Upgrading the United States national security toolbox will require
reducing the size of its armed forces. In an era of relative peace and
security, the U.S. military should not be the primary prism through
which the country sees the world. As a fungible tool that can back up
coercive threats, the U.S. military is certainly an important element of
national power. However, it contributes very little to lasting solutions
for 99 percent problems. And the Pentagons enormous budget not
only wastes precious resources; it also warps national security thinking
and policymaking. Since the military controls the overwhelming share
of the resources within the national security system, policymakers tend
to perceive all challenges through the distorting lens of the armed forces
and respond accordingly. This tendency is one reason the U.S. military
is so big. But it is also a case of the tail wagging the dog: the vast size of
the military is a major reason every challenge is seen as a threat.
More than 60 years of U.S. diplomatic and military eorts have
helped create a world that is freer and more secure. In the process,
the United States has fostered a global environment that bolsters
U.S. interests and generally accepts U.S. power and infuence. The
result is a world far less dangerous than ever before. The United
States, in other words, has won. Now, it needs a national security
strategy and an approach to foreign policy that refect that reality.
F
or the frst time since the 1950s, Brazil
has democracy and economic prosperity.
GDP is not increasing at vertiginous Chi-
nese or Indian rates, but a constant pace of growth
(even in the midst of the global crisis) in combina-
tion with well-implemented social policies took 30
million people out of poverty. The country is be-
coming a middle class society, and the world sixth-
largest economy, with a domestic market of almost
200 million consumers. Rio de Janeiros revival is
even more impressive. The city is serving as host to
a number of international sports events that sym-
bolize Brazils new global standing, such as the
Pan-American Games (2007), several matches of
the World Cup (2014) and the Olympics (2016).
Rio was the capital of Brazil from the eighteenth
century to 1960. It was praised worldwide as the
wonderful city _ an expression invented by a de-
lighted French writer _but it has suffered a severe
decline since the national government moved to
Braslia. The military dictatorship that ruled Brazil
from 1964 to 1985 was particularly harsh on Rio,
where popular demonstrations against the regime
were big. The generals ended the autonomous sta-
tus of the city and forced it to merge with the much
poorer and conservative hinterland of the state of
Rio de Janeiro. The signs of urban decay were strong
the old port and industrial neighborhoods became
dangerous and forgotten areas, many slums were
taken by drug gangs and in the late 1990s violence
escalated to 70 homicides per 100,000 inhabit-
ants__one of the highest rates in the world.
Rios Revival: From bullet-ridden
decline to the happiest city
Then things started to change for better. The dis-
covery of huge offshore oil reserves turned Rio into
Brazils energy capital__a kind of tropical Houston
__as 70 percent of Brazilian oil is produced on Rios
coastline. The city is host to the giant state companies
Petrobras and Eletrobras. Private investment returned
with automobile plants in the hinterland, which grew
faster than the capital. Traditional districts such as
Lapa and Santa Teresa were revitalized, with bars,
restaurants, and a vibrant night-life. A similar project
was undertaken for the old port, with a modern one
being built in the bay of Sepetiba, near Rio.
After decades of useless security policies, Rios
state government developed a new approach, one
that is community-oriented: the Pacifcation Police
Units. It retook nineteen slums (there are plans to
expand it to forty fve communities) from drug gangs,
reducing crime in an expressive way. Homicide rates
fell to 25 in 100,000__ still high, but the lowest in
a generation. Economic growth and social policy are
also working. One of the biggest crime lords in the
city said in a interview that he had lost many of his
fellow gangster to jobs in the public works of the
federal government, which is building infrastructure
such as housing projects, roads and elevators in
slums. But the drug dealer said that he was glad,
because his friends deserved a better future than
crime. No wonder that in 2009 Forbes magazine
chose Rio as the happiest city on the planet.
The Bottlenecks of
Brazilian Development
Although Brazil is changing, there are still
many bottlenecks for growth, which may pre-
vent the country from transforming into a fully
developed society. The country is a complex Fed-
erative state, with confused lines of responsibility
between national, states and cities governments.
It is hard for them to work together, and diffcult
for citizens to pressure for accountability.
The electoral system combines proportional repre-
sentation with huge districts that include up to sev-
enty members in each. There are more than twenty
parties in Congress, and Brazilian presidents are man-
agers of large and heterogeneous alliances, distribut-
ing cabinet positions and jobs in the civil service to
their supporters. Corruption and pork-barrel spend-
ing are widespread. President Dilma Rousseffs allies
range from the far right to communist, and control 80
percent of parliament.
The price of stability is very slow
institutional changes, because so
many actors have veto power: -The
political cost of any of reform is so
big that there is a huge risk of loos-
ing all the time and in the end achieving nothing-,
says Antonio Bonchristiano, co-chief executive offcer
at GP Investments. The state remains ineffective, domi-
nated by political cronies, with the exception of pockets
of professionalization such as the Ministry of Finance
and the Foreign Service. The tax rate is over 35 percent,
extremely high for Latin American standards, and close
to that of west European welfare states.
But public services are much worse. Tests conducted
by the OECDs Programme for Interntional Studen As-
sessment (PISA) tests show that Brazils schools and
are far behind not only the OECD countries, but also
other developing nations such as China, Turkey, and
Uruguay. Less than a third of Brazilians complete high
school, and little more than 10 percent fnish college.
Brazil gave its frst jump with basic income and
health policies. The next big jump will be education-,
bets Flvio Castro, a partner in FSB Comunicaes.
Roads, airports, and ports are usually in poor condi-
tions and half of the population does not have access
to sanitation. Public private partnerships would be a
way to deal with these problems, but Brazil still has
not been able to develop a framework for the arrange-
ments: PPPs demand a guarantee fund, and there are
few states and cities with the resources to create one
and assure their role in the projects, explains Regis
Fichtner , the Rio governors chief of staff, .
The economy is still plagued by infation (6.5 percent
in 2011) and inequality (GINI over 0.5). Dependence on
commodities exports such as soya beans and iron ore
is rising, and industry is scared of Chinese competition.
There are concerns about a credit bubble, as two-thirds
of Brazilian families are in debt. Brazil has managed to
evolve from a poor country into a middle-income nation.
But there is still a long way between growth and develop-
ment, and to the fulfllment of global-power aspirations.
The Brazilian government and society need to deal now
with the obstacles that were pushed off for so long.
Brazils Long Road Towards Development
SPONSORED SECTION
Flavio
CasTRo,
Partner
at FSB
Comunicaes
anTonio
BonChRis-
Tiano,
CEO of GP
Investimentos
By Maurcio Santoro
Professor of Political Science at Getlio Vargas Foundation, Rio de Janeiro
The Iraq We Left Behind
Welcome to the Worlds Next Failed State
Ned Parker
[94]
Ned Parker is Edward R. Murrow Press Fellow at the Council on
Foreign Relations. He was a correspondent for the Los Angeles Times in
Iraq in 200711.
Nine years after U.S. troops toppled Saddam Hussein and just a
few months after the last U.S. soldier left Iraq, the country has become
something close to a failed state. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki
presides over a system rife with corruption and brutality, in which
political leaders use security forces and militias to repress enemies
and intimidate the general population. The law exists as a weapon to
be wielded against rivals and to hide the misdeeds of allies. The
dream of an Iraq governed by elected leaders answerable to the people
is rapidly fading away.
The Iraqi state cannot provide basic services, including regular
electricity in summer, clean water, and decent health care; mean-
while, unemployment among young men hovers close to 30 percent,
making them easy recruits for criminal gangs and militant factions.
Although the level of violence is down from the worst days of the
civil war in 2006 and 2007, the current pace of bombings and shoot-
ings is more than enough to leave most Iraqis on edge and deeply
uncertain about their futures. They have lost any hope that the
bloodshed will go away and simply live with their dread. Acrimony in
the political realm and the violence in the cities create a destabilizing
feedback loop, whereby the bloodshed sows mistrust in the halls of
power and politicians are inclined to settle scores with their proxies
in the streets.
14_Parker_pp94_110.indd 94 1/17/12 3:04 PM
foreign affairs
.
Both Maliki and his rivals are responsible for the slow slide toward
chaos, prisoners of their own history under Saddam. Iraq today is
divided between once-persecuted Shiite religious parties, such as
Malikis Dawa Party, still hungry for revenge, and secular and Sunni
parties that long for a less bloody version of Saddams Baath Party,
with its nationalist ideology and intolerance of religious and ethnic
politics. Meanwhile, the Kurds maneuver gingerly around the divisions
in Baghdad. Their priority is to preserve their near autonomy in
northern Iraq and ward o the resurrection of a powerful central gov-
ernment that could one day besiege their cities and bombard their
villages, as Baghdad did throughout the twentieth century.
All sides hold the others responsible for all the friends and family
killed during the Saddam era and the civil war that followed the U.S.
invasion. All of Iraqs political leaders seem to live by the maxim that
no enemy can become a partner, just a temporary ally; betrayal lurks
around every corner. Each politician grabs as much power as he can,
and unchecked ambition, ego, and historical grudges lead them all to
ignore the consequences of their behavior for Iraqs new institutions
and its society.
Malikis tactics closely echo the pattern laid down by his predeces-
sors, from Iraqs post-Ottoman monarchs to its rst prime minister,
Abdul Karim Kassem, to Saddam himself: put yourself rst, and guard
power with a ruthless security apparatus. Malikis opponents, including
his secular rival Ayad Allawi, the head of the Iraqiya Party, have given
no indication they would act any dierently. In the last year, Maliki has
chipped away at safeguards for democracy, stocking the countrys Hu-
man Rights Ministry with loyalists and using the states anticorruption
oces to target political enemies. Malikis harassment and persecution
of anyone deemed a threat to himself or his party has dramatically re-
duced freedom throughout Iraq. Most ominously for his country, and
himself, Maliki, through his bullying and nepotistic rule, threatens to
cause his own undoing and push Iraq back into civil war.
absentee washi ngton
This was not the Iraq the United States envisioned as it planned
its invasion less than a decade ago. After toppling Saddam in 2003,
14_Parker_pp94_110.indd 95 1/17/12 3:04 PM
Ned Parker
.
Volume 91 No. 2
U.S. policy aimed to create a democratic state that enshrined civil
liberties; national reconciliation; a fair, apolitical judiciary; and freedom
of speech. However, this goal was jeopardized from day one of the
U.S. occupation by a series of debilitating blunders: not sending
enough U.S. forces to secure the country, dissolving the old Iraqi
military, and allowing a draconian purge of Baath Party members
from civilian ministries. It was only belatedly, in Iraqs darkest hour,
that the Bush administration sent thousands more troops to stop the
civil war that had erupted. During the surge, in 2007, the United
States forced the ruling Shiite religious parties to take steps toward
making peace with the Sunnis, blocked blatantly political arrests,
and worked to marginalize, if not jail, ocials implicated in violence.
The hope was that improved security would allow Iraq to reach stability
and acquire the trappings of liberal governance.
Maliki and his colleagues are not the only ones to blame for the
dashing of these hopes and the slide away from democracy. Since
the last months of the Bush administration and the beginning of the
Obama presidency, rather than concentrate on shoring up democratic
principles, as it had during the surge, Washington has instead focused on
securing its long-term strategic relationship with Baghdad, especially
with the prime minister, so that it could more easily withdraw U.S.
forces. In the process, the United States failed to capitalize on the gains
of the U.S. troop surgethe Iraqi peoples renunciation of religious
extremists and desire for normalcythereby damaging the chances
that a unied, nonsectarian government could emerge.
Washingtons biggest mistake of recent years came in the summer
of 2010, when the United States dropped the pretense of neutrality
by backing Maliki for the post of prime minister over Allawieven
though Allawis party list had received more votes in the national
elections held in March. U.S. ocials argued that only a Shiite Islamist
had the credibility and legitimacy to serve as prime minister and
disparaged any alternative to Maliki. But by anointing Maliki, a devout
Shiite who already had Irans endorsement, the United States gave
him the condence to avoid serious compromises with Allawi, a
secular Shiite supported by the countrys Sunnis.
In November 2010, Maliki and Allawi reached a power-sharing agree-
ment, sponsored by the Kurdish government in Erbil and Washington,
14_Parker_pp94_110.indd 96 1/17/12 3:04 PM
foreignaffairs
.
reuters/ mohammedameen
Caught in the crossfre: an Iraqi soldier on patrol in Baghdad, March 2009
in which Maliki was supposed to relinquish his direct command of
the security forces and his tight grip on the cabinet and most ministries.
The agreement awarded the Defense Ministry to Iraqiya and appointed
Allawi to head a new consultative policy body. U.S. ocials bragged
that they had outmaneuvered Iran and midwifed a nonsectarian
government in Baghdad.
But Washington quickly disengaged from actually ensuring that
the provisions of the deal were implemented. U.S. Vice President
Joseph Biden, the Obama administrations leading gure on Iraq
policy, was largely absent from Iraq for nearly a year as the power-
sharing arrangement unraveled. At the U.S. embassy in Baghdad,
ocials complained in private about Malikis refusal to share power
as he had promised, but they kept quiet in public, even as Malikis
military command stepped up its campaign of harassment and ar-
rests of those considered rivals. When I was in Baghdad last June, I
asked a U.S. diplomat why the embassy had said nothing about
an ongoing crackdown against pro-democracy activists, including an
incident in which Iraqi security agents had beaten protesters in broad
daylight. He said that although U.S. ocials had a regular dialogue
14_Parker_pp94_110_Blues.indd 97 1/26/12 10:32 AM
Ned Parker
.
Volume 91 No. 2
with Maliki about human rights, Washingtons overriding focus and
concern was building a security relationship with the Iraqi government.
But by turning a blind eye to Malikis encroaching authoritarianism,
U.S. ocials allowed Iraqs political culture to disintegrate. (It was
this disarray that also made it impossible for U.S. ocials to get
Iraqs leaders to push an immunity agreement through parliament so
that a small number of U.S. troops could stay on after 2011.) Rather
than help Iraq move forward, the United States allowed the country
to drift back toward sectarianism and authoritarian rule.
The political situation in Baghdad hit a new low last December.
The day after the last U.S. soldier left the country, Maliki suddenly
called for the arrest of Iraqs Sunni vice president, Tariq al-Hashimi,
on charges of running death squads. With
this move, Maliki abandoned any lingering
pretense that he was interested in national
reconciliation and undermined the promises
that he and U.S. President Barack Obama
had made just days before in Washington,
when they declared Iraq a stable democracy.
Hashimi ed to Kurdistan, and the countrys
political process was plunged into limbo.
The crisis exposed the articial, Potemkin-
village-like nature of Iraqs democratic system and how swiftly the
feuds among Iraqs national leaders could endanger the state.
No political gure, no matter how high ranking, now doubts
Malikis ability to harness the law and the state to his ambitions.
Still, Maliki lacks the authority to eliminate all his enemies, by
virtue of being enmeshed in a parliament-based system, which
was imposed by the United States after 2003. But he will keep
striving for absolute power, using fear, intimidation, and cronyism.
The opposition will conspire against him and attempt to sabotage
his policies, positive or negative, out of the desire to see him fail.
But handicapped by their own divisions, they will never succeed
in ousting him. This corrosive deadlock will only fan further dis-
illusionment with the current order, sending the political system
hurtling toward implosion. One of three outcomesall dangerous
will likely result.
By turning a
blind eye to Malikis
authoritarianism, U.S.
offcials let Iraqs
politics disintegrate.
14_Parker_pp94_110.indd 98 1/17/12 3:04 PM
UNITED STATES INSTITUTE OF PEACE PRESS
Beyond Power Sharing
Institutional Options for an Afghan Peace Process
Peaceworks 78 December 2011
Hamish Nixon and Caroline Hartzell
Much of the debate about a peace settlement with insurgents in Afghanistan focuses only on
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Special Report 299 December 2011
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Using examples ranging from the Baltic states to West Africa and Central Asia, this report
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Strategy and Policy Choices for Americas Longest War
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and The George Washington University
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foreign affairs
.
First, some specic event or series of eventsfor example, the
local and national elections expected in 2013 and 2014, respectively,
or an escalation of the campaign of arrests against Malikis foes
could trigger violence involving Iraqs tribes, sects, ethnicities, and
parties. Second, the ineectual rule of the central government could
lead Sunni and Shiite regional leaders to carve out their own autono-
mous zones, leaving Iraq a state in name only, a prospect that could
also ignite bloodshed if Baghdad refuses to recognize those boundaries
or the provinces begin to ght over territory. Third, Shiite political
gures and military ocers could mount a coup, claiming the current
government was endangering the country and declaring special
rule for an emergency period. Repressive crackdowns would follow,
triggering a cycle of retributive violence.
To save Iraq from these fatesany one of which would prove
disastrous and would mark a total defeat for the United States in
terms of its aims for the countryWashington must push Baghdad
to honor the power-sharing agreements reached over a year ago and
take concrete steps toward transparent governance, the rule of law,
and national reconciliation. As much as Maliki will try to resist U.S.
eorts to rein him in, he still believes that the United States can help
him rebuild Iraq. He is caught between his grand ambition to attain
auence for his country, making Iraq an envy of nations, and his
roots as an underground Islamic revolutionary. If he sees his aban-
donment by Washington as spelling the end to his rule or leading
Iraq down the path of international isolation, as Saddam once led
the country, he will be susceptible to pressure.
the afterli fe of the emerald ci ty
To fully understand just how Iraqs current rulers work, it helps to
visit the government in the Green Zone, 3.9 square miles of fortied
territory in the heart of Baghdad. In the Saddam era, the neighbor-
hood was called Karradat Mariam, after a local woman who cared
for the poor. The districts homes, palaces, hotels, and monuments
stood as garish displays of the Baath regimes wealth and pretensions.
After the U.S. invasion in 2003, the U.S. military took control of the
area and formalized its boundaries with blast walls and barbed wire.
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Ned Parker
.
Volume 91 No. 2
Then, in January 2009, when the United States ceded control over
Iraqi security, Maliki became the lord of the Green Zone. Much like
his U.S. predecessors, he spoke of opening the major highway that
cuts through the restricted area to ease peoples daily lives. But also
like his U.S. predecessors, he was unable to keep his promise: the
world outside proved too dangerous. Instead, Malikis rule of the Green
Zone became all-encompassing. Only those with the proper badges
or escorted by someone with a government-issued Green Zone
identication card can enter. (Those badges have become a source of
corruption: according to U.S. military ocers and Iraqis living
around the area, one can be had for $10,000.) The beggars, widows,
and families with sick relatives who once made a pilgrimage to the
gates of the parliament building in the Green Zone to beg lawmakers
for help are now barred from entry.
Maliki has mimicked many of the hierarchical controls created
during the U.S. occupation. His oce splits Green Zone badges into
the same color-coded ranks (blue for the highest level of access, orange
and red for the lowest) as did the United States, and Maliki awards
badges to buy inuence and patronage, just as U.S. ocials once did.
During the years of U.S. control, the U.S. Army stationed military
police and army units to police and defend the Green Zone. Maliki
has his own version: in late 2008, he created the Baghdad Brigade, a
special unit that guards the areas gates and patrols its private roads.
The brigade, which operates outside the normal chain of command,
is comprised of soldiers from the countrys Shiite heartland sympa-
thetic to Maliki and his Dawa Party. (The religious nature of the
force is visible on holidays, when banners depicting Shiite icons hang
from the Green Zones entrances.)
Moreover, Maliki has made the management of his oce a family
aair, to the point where some high-ranking government ocials
now wonder, as they told me, whether they serve a family or a state.
This has created an irony obvious to many Iraqis: at a time when the
rest of the Arab world is rejecting family rule, Maliki has surrounded
himself with his kin and others from his birthplace of Twaireej, a
rural area south of Baghdad. His son Ahmed, who is deputy to the
chief of sta and in charge of his fathers personal security, is arguably
the most powerful person in Malikis oce. He has gained particular
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.
March / April 2012 [1 01 ]
notoriety for his consolidation of property in the Green Zone, which
he has achieved by ordering the Baghdad Brigade to seize houses
belonging to Iraqis and foreign contractors. These seizures have driven
most Western companies out of the Green Zone. The Iraqi government
does have legitimate reasons for wanting to ease out those Western rms
that claimed land in the Green Zone after 2003. But such heavy-handed
tacticsand the fact that the seized property has largely remained
under Ahmeds controlhave created the impression that Malikis
inner circle is mostly interested in enriching itself.
Maliki has also deployed his forces to intimidate and hamper his
enemies. After the announcement of the arrest warrant against
Hashimi in December, for example, Maliki deployed tanks outside
the homes of Hashimi and other Iraqiya leaders; forces from the
Baghdad Brigade required guests to present their credentials before
going inside. He has dangled security as a carrot, awarding body-
guard battalions to allies while refusing to grant a similar request to
a senior elected Sunni ocial whom he dislikes, despite the danger
to his rivals life.
palaces and pri sons
The greatest symbol of Malikis strength in the Green Zone is a
compound known as Camp Honor, the site of a bombed-out palatial
meeting hall, built by Saddam in the 1990s, whose ceiling has a mural
of Iraqi soldiers ghting U.S. troops. The U.S. military turned it into a
base, and then, in 2006, it became the headquarters for an Iraqi army
division. Today, the unkempt grounds are home to the giant palace,
overgrown weeds, prefabricated houses, and shipping containers.
Since 2009, Camp Honor has also been the site of the private
detention center overseen by Malikis military oce, which supervises
all security operations and whose authority supersedes that of the
Interior and Defense Ministries. In an infamous case from October
2009, Iraqi counterterrorism and regular army units grabbed more than
430 Sunni men in Mosul on the orders of that oce. The prisoners
were rst held in Camp Honor and then transferred to a secret prison
at Baghdads Muthanna Air Base, where they were discovered in March
2010 by ocials from the Human Rights Ministry. Looking to avoid
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Ned Parker
.
Volume 91 No. 2
a controversy so shortly after the national elections held earlier that
month, Maliki agreed to shut down the Muthanna jail. But he refused
to relinquish control of the Camp Honor detention facility despite
having pledged to do so. A year later, a committee of Iraqi lawmakers
toured the jail and threatened to expose its ndings publicly; in response,
the government announced Camp Honors formal closure. Yet as
Iraqi parliamentarians and other government ocials told me, Camp
Honor in fact remains open as a secret jail for prisoners captured by
Malikis elite forces.
There are alarming signs that those held there continue to be tortured
to extract confessions; then, once the desired testimony is obtained,
they are sent o to regular, legally recognized prisons. Last May, the
International Committee of the Red Cross wrote a condential let-
ter to Maliki demanding full access to the jail. (I obtained a copy
through my work as a reporter for the Los Angeles Times.) Based on
interviews with former detainees at Camp Honor, the Red Cross
claimed that it had uncovered evidence of systematic torture and
gross mistreatment, including rape and electric shock to the genitals.
It wrote that it had learned that Iraqi judges had been present during
some of the torture sessions to extract confessions. The Red Cross also
added that it knew of three other secret Green Zone jails connected
to Camp Honor that remained active and hid detainees in case of
any international or local inspections. When I asked about the letter,
the Red Cross declined to comment.
Last December, I met a middle-aged Iraqi man, Abu Ibrahim
(this was an assumed name; he feared for retribution from military
units close to Maliki), who told me that he had been picked up by
Iraqi counterterrorism soldiers in a raid on his Baghdad neighborhood
a few months earlier. Soldiers burst into his house in the middle
of the night. A masked informant identied him and his father as
suspected terrorists. He said he was rst taken to the main airport in
Baghdad, where he was well treated, thanks to the presence of U.S.
forces. But once the counterterrorism troops drove him to the Green
Zone, the treatment became rougher. For three days, he was brought
to a cluster of trailers for interrogation, where he said he was chained to
a bar and left to dangle until he passed out. The guards yelled, Are you
al Qaeda? Are you Baathist? They later took him into a nearby trailer
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.
March / April 2012 [1 03]
where a judge attached to the counterterrorism force was reviewing his
le. The judge expressed doubts about the secret informant who had
accused him of terrorism and ordered his release.
Another judge, however, refused to free his father, who had been a
high-ranking ocer in the Saddam-era army. Weeks after Abu Ibrahim
was released, an intermediary told him that the secret informant would
be willing to drop the allegations against his father in exchange for
money. U.S. military ocers and Iraqi human rights inspectors have
uncovered a familiar pattern for those held in Iraqi jails: a security
ocer or an informant demands money for a detainee to be released,
leading to protracted negotiations. But in the case of Abu Ibrahims
father, before any talks could take shape, the middleman disappeared.
Now, Abu Ibrahim does not know if someone will ask him for money
again or what will become of his father.
The situation is unlikely to improve anytime soon, as any investigator
from the Human Rights Ministry or any ocial from any other govern-
ment oce who is brave enough to try to probe the jails would face
immediate persecution. Three investigators have already ed the
country, and those remaining are terried. One former Iraqi ocial
who worked on human rights issues and left the country last year
because he was afraid for his safety told me that Maliki and the
Dawa Party were essentially free to carry out whatever they liked in
their jails. Everything is under their control, he said. Its easy for
them to accuse anyone and destroy him.
easy money i raq
Endemic corruption within the army and the police not only
contributes to such prisoner abuse but also feeds into broader, more
systemic problems within Iraqs security apparatus. The culture of
graft leads to crippling ineciencies and dangerous gaps: commanders
pad military payrolls with soldiers who do not exist, military ocers
and ministry ocials receive kickbacks on contracts for everything
from food supplies to defense equipment, and senior ocials create
skeleton companies to pilfer money from the Treasury.
The toxic brew of corruption undermines any hopes for reform
and improved governance. Adel Abdul Mahdi, who was Iraqs vice
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Ned Parker
.
Volume 91 No. 2
president until he resigned last summer in protest over Malikis bloated
cabinet and the culture of entitlement among ocials, told me that
corruption is so pervasive that it is blocking the provision of basic
services. For example, as he explained, maas in business and the
government make money o the lack of progress in the electricity
sector through overpriced contracts and sales funneled to politically
connected but inecient rms.
No political party or faction is immune to the lure of easy money,
fed by the states lucrative oil revenues and the lax controls on how cash
is spent. The loyalty of a lawmaker, cleric, commander, or tribal
leader can be bought with houses, cars, and cash. A longtime Iraqi
civil servant close to Malikis Dawa Party explained to me how it
works: political gures set up shell com-
panies, helmed by a trusted businessperson
or relative, that then bid to deliver goods
or services to the government. The con-
tracts, whether for building a sewage line or
beautifying the Baghdad highway, are con-
sistently over priced, allowing the companies
to divert revenues and assets to the foreign
bank accounts of government ocials. An
electricity ocial told me that the Electricity
Ministry regularly purchases equipment for its distribution department
that is purportedly German but is in fact cheap Chinese or Iranian
knockos; similarly, a state-employed pharmacist in Baghdad com-
plained about the cheap medicine that the government imports with
no concern for quality because ocials get kickbacks from particular
companies or importers.
This culture of corruption lters up to the highest levels of gov-
ernment: even Iraqs national budget is shrouded in mystery, with
appropriations announced and spent with little transparency.
Baghdad has spent more than $400 billion since 2004, but the
government is only now preparing to release a nal account of its
budgets from 2004 to 2009. Most of the cash spent will likely
never be properly accounted for. In 2011, Baghdad reported that it
did not know how much of the $25 billion that the central govern-
ment had advanced to ministries, local governments, and state
With no plan to
break the countrys
political stalemate, the
only course left for all
sides is brinkmanship.
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companies as of the middle of 2010 had actually been spent or if any
excess funds could be returned.
Iraqs opaque nances create an atmosphere in which misdealings
ourish. High-level politicians and ocials can quickly put a halt to
any investigation into wrongdoing among their associates or underlings.
In April 2009, for example, Iraqs Commission on Public Integrity
launched an investigation into Abdul Falah al-Sudani, then the trade
minister and a member of a branch of Malikis Dawa Party, for allegedly
embezzling millions of dollars in public funds. A month after a shoot-
out in central Baghdad between his sta and investigators, Sudani
tried to ee the country and was briey jailed. But almost a year later,
a judge dismissed the case against him.
Those who have worked in the states anticorruption bodies are
bleak about the future. They have been blocked too many times by
the powerful and realize that their lives are in danger. Some have
been killed. The head of the Commission on Public Integrity resigned
in September, frustrated by his inability to pursue corruption charges
against high ocials. Maliki replaced him with someone considered
to be more pliant and less likely to antagonize those in power. In
Baghdad, I met with an anticorruption ocial who showed me a
number of veiled threats he had received on his cell phone from the
boss of a company suspected of funneling money to the Dawa Party.
One text message read, Is it acceptable some government gures
would provoke you to be against us? Do you think a big company like
ours would not know about this? It went on to say, We are requesting
that God protects you. The ocial was worried for his safety. He
now never leaves home without a bodyguard. Committing murder
in Iraq is casual, he said, like drinking a morning cup of coee.
dashed hopes
Disenchantment with corruption and government dysfunction
has spread to Basra, the oil-rich city in Iraqs Shiite south. It was
here, with his 2008 campaign against the Shiite militias that were
terrorizing ordinary Iraqis, where Maliki showed himself a bold
leader willing to confront powerful Shiite armed groups even if it
might cost him his job. Malikis popularity soared; having saved the
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city from chaos, he was viewed as the best hope for security and
development. But four years later, those hopes have largely been
dashed:Basraismarkedbyopenpondsbrimmingwithsewage,spo-
radicelectricity,andshantytownsmadefromlootedsheetmetaland
bricks.LookingattheconvoysofAmericanandEuropeanoilwork-
ers driving across town and the two new luxury hotels that have
openedinrecentyears,localsaresurethatthemoneymadefromtheir
oileldsisbeingwhiskedotoBaghdad.
Today,manylocalbusinesspeopleandpoliticiansbelievethatthe
creationofanautonomousregionintheprovinceofBasraistheonly
way to save it from poverty and the yoke of a corrupt elite in the
capital.They are angry that Baghdad controls security and directs
spendingintheprovince,holdingbackfundsfromthelocalgovern-
mentinaneorttoextenditsdominanceoverthewealthyregion.
Last February, popular demonstrations in the province over poor
servicesandocialcorruptionforcedtheDawaPartyschoicesfor
governor and chair of the provincial council to resign. (Protests
have also forced the resignation of governors in two other Shiite
provinces.)Inlate2010,Basrascouncilvotedinfavorofareferendum
onfederalism,butthecentralgovernmentsimplyignoredthemotion.
Meanwhile, public anger in Basra and among Shiite communities
acrossthecountrypromptedtheIraqiShiitesmostreveredspiritual
guide,GrandAyatollahAlial-Sistani,whoseendorsementisreadily
soughtbytheShiitepoliticalelite,torefuseallmeetingswithelected
ocials,includingMaliki.LocalpoliticiansinBasraaresensitiveto
thepopularmood,andevenguresfromMalikispoliticalslatefeel
theymustasserttheirindependencefromBaghdad.
Thenewchairoftheprovincialcouncil,Sabahal-Bazouni,who
representsabranchofMalikisDawaParty,toldmeofBasraswoes:
closedfactories,electricityblackoutsinthesummer,milesofslums,
dried-outirrigationcanals.Hewonderedhowtheprovincethatsupplies
70percentofthecountrysoilcouldbesopoor.HesaidthatBasra
shouldbeabletoholdareferendumongreaterautonomy,evenover
theobjectionsofMalikiandthegovernmentinBaghdad.
IfBasradoesmanagetobecomeanautonomousregion,Bazouni
argues that the province should also gain the right to negotiate all
futureoilcontractsinitsterritory,aswellasmanageitsownportand
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borders and keep its own security forces. It would send back revenues
to the Iraqi central government according to the national law, when it
is nally passed, and whatever agreements Basra reached with Baghdad.
The experiment could serve as a model for the capitals relationships
with other restive regions, such as the two Sunni-led provinces cur-
rently also requesting independence. Of course, it could also cause
splits, perhaps violent ones, within the countrys Shiite majority. Those
ocials, such as Maliki, who advocate a strong national government
could fall into conict with their local counterparts who want greater
power and control of Basras lucrative resources. The temptation of
being able to control a nearly autonomous region could also spark
ghting among the local branches of Shiite parties, each of which sees
itself as the rightful ruler of the wealthy region. Indeed, it was such
competition that drove Basra to lawlessness before Malikis inter-
vention in 2008. Basras residents seem to recognize these dangers,
yet because they view Baghdad as pilfering their wealth, they see
no better option.
the righteous have thei r opponents
Faced with the prospect of his Shiite base splintering, Maliki has
taken to fanning public fears of Iraqs Sunni minority. He seems to
think that if he can keep Iraqs Shiites afraid of the Sunnis, they will
not dare break with him and risk jeopardizing Shiite dominance of
the political process. Maliki has accordingly begun to emphasize the
Sunni atrocities committed during the Saddam era and the recent
civil war. Any successful person has enemies; the righteous have their
opponents. Moses has his pharaoh, and every Hussein has his Yazid,
Maliki said in a speech on New Years Day, referring to the caliph who
massacred Imam Hussein and his followers in the seventh century,
giving birth to the modern-day schism between Shiites and Sunnis.
Such a strategy marks a break from Malikis rhetoric in 2008, when,
in order to extend his writ, he used the national army to ght Shiite
militias and explored the idea of forming alliances with Sunni leaders.
These relationships were abandoned in the raw politics of the 2010
national elections and the ensuing competition between Maliki and
Allawi. In Malikis subsequent bid to consolidate his power, he has
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come to rely more and more on fundamentalist Shiite parties. Since
the elections, Maliki and his supporters have polarized the countrys
politics by trying to arrest Sunni politicians and announcing a series
of foiled terrorist plots by Sunnis.
As a result, whereas two years ago many Sunnis viewed Maliki
favorably, they now perceive him as an Iranian-backed despot out to
destroy their community. According to former Sunni allies of Maliki,
the Sunni community now fears that if Maliki hangs on to power, he
will continue persecuting Sunnis with arbitrary arrests and intimidation
campaigns. The Speaker of parliament, Osama al-Nujai, a Sunni from
the Iraqiya bloc, has warned that if Baghdad continues to carry out
such hostile actions, the Sunni population will be forced to declare their
own autonomous regions. Indeed, many Sunni leaders now champion
self-rule, an idea they opposed in 2005, when it was legally enshrined
in the constitution (an article that Maliki continues to ignore). At the
time, Sunni leaders viewed federalism as a recipe for Iraqs destruction
and loathed the Kurds for their autonomy in the north. Today, they
see the way the Kurds have thrived as proof that the only way to get
a fair distribution of Iraqs wealth and to protect themselves from
Baghdad is by embracing a federalist Iraq.
Last October, after security forces from Baghdad arrested dozens
of aging former Baathists in the Sunni-majority Salahuddin Province,
Salahuddin became the rst Sunni region to call for a federal system.
The recent history of Samarra, a strategically important city in Sala-
huddin and home to the sacred Askariya Mosque, provides a measure
of the toll that Iraqs sectarian battles have taken on ordinary citizens.
The city was once a model of the countrys rich cross-cultural traditions,
with its gold-domed mosque worshipped at by Shiites and tended by
the citys majority Sunni population. But in 2006, al Qaeda in Iraq
blew up the sanctuary, thereby igniting the countrys civil war. The
citys streets belonged to al Qaeda and its foot soldiers, who terrorized
the local population. Now, six years later, the violence has subsided,
and Shiite pilgrims are again traveling to pray in Samarrabut the
shrine remains walled o with giant cement barriers that make it
look like a maximum-security prison. Samarras Sunni residents,
who once prayed by the shrine and celebrated their weddings there,
largely keep their distance. Men stand idle in front of empty clothing
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shops and hotels that once catered to pilgrims but are now eectively
sealed o from commerce. Even locals have stopped shopping in the
citys center so as to avoid the national police who harass those who
come too close to the shrine.
The more Baghdad imposes its will on Sunni areas, the greater
the chances for wider sectarian unrest. With no plan to break the
countrys political stalemate, the only course left for all sides is brink-
manship, with escalating Sunni demands for freedom and Baghdad
answering back with intimidation. Even the Iraqi Kurds are encour-
aging the Sunnis to push for self-rule: they believe that if the Sunnis,
traditionally hostile to Kurdish ambitions, embraced federalism, it
would legitimize their own privileges and prevent Baghdad from
ever trying to encroach on their authority.
Federalism could indeed end up being an eective mechanism for
the countrys Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds to live together peacefully
but for it to work, a process of authentic national reconciliation
would have to come rst. Without shared decision-making in gov-
ernment, inclusive institutions, and trust and respect for the law, fed-
eralism would lead to the splintering of Iraq, turning the country
into a proxy battleeld between Iran and the Sunni Muslim world.
In this scenario, Iraq would exist only in name, leaving a collection of
territories often at war with one another and at the mercy of foreign
powers. Civilians would be subjected to terrorist attacks, caught in
the middle of the ensuing regional struggles for oil and water. The
notion of Iraq as a modern nation-state would fade, relegated to
the ranks of failed twentieth-century colonial experiments.
salvagi ng the american legacy
The only hope Iraq has of escaping a future of war or corrupt,
authoritarian rule is for the United States and the international com-
munity to start pushing hard for power sharing and democracy. Since
Iraqs 2010 elections, Washington has completely failed on this score.
But U.S. ocials must not stay silent in the face of illegal detentions
and crackdowns on civil liberties; neither should they back away
from the power-sharing agreements they helped sponsor for the sake
of short-term political considerations. Even with U.S. soldiers gone
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from the country, the United States retains leverage over Iraq. It can
and should, for example, threaten to keep Iraq locked in its so-called
Chapter 7 status in the United Nations, which deprives Iraq of full
sovereignty and requires it to make reparations payments to Kuwait.
And it should warn Iraq that it will cancel the sale of U.S. ghter
jets, tanks, and surveillance equipment to the government unless it
changes course. Iraqs leaders need to know that the international
community has redlines, and that secret prisons, the use of torture
to extract confessions, and the harassment of democracy activists
will not be tolerated. As for the danger of pushing Baghdad closer to
Tehran, although Iran would gladly smother Iraq in a suocating
embrace, Iraqs own tortuous history of war with its neighbor means
that Iraq will continue to seek a relationship with the West in part to
counterbalance Tehran.
The local elections in 2013 and the national elections the year after
will be a test of whether Iraqs leaders indeed believe in representative
government or whether those in power now will try to hold on to it by
any means necessary. Maliki is currently pursuing a number of ocials
on the electoral commissions sta with corruption investigations.
And in January 2011, he won a court ruling that placed the commission
under his authority, rather than under the parliaments. Whereas some
Iraqi ocials wonder if the next elections will be free and fair, several
former U.S. military ocers wonder if the elections will happen at all.
The United States must ensure that they do and that they are free
and fair, and it must not countenance any democratic backsliding
for the sake of political expediency. Confronting Maliki and his gov-
ernment on abuses and political arrests may strain relations, but
ignoring such topics has only helped lead Iraq to its current, deeply
troubled state. If Iraq slips into dictatorship or war, this will be the
United States legacy in the country. But Iraq should not be written
o. With outside help, it could still manage to muddle through with an
elected government that is somewhat accountable and somewhat rep-
resentative. Such an outcome would go a long way toward redeeming
the United States disastrous misadventure there.
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War Downsized
How to Accomplish More With Less
Carter Malkasian and J. Kael Weston
[1 1 1 ]
Carter Malkasian is Director of the Center for Stability and De-
velopment at CNA. He is a former Political Ocer for the U.S. State
Department in Garmser, Afghanistan. J. Kael Weston is a former
Political Ocer with the State Department who worked in Iraq and
Afghanistan from 2003 to 2010.
TheUnitedStates, facing deepening economic and scal woes
at home, is preparing to withdraw from Afghanistan. More and more
policymakers, congressional representatives, and members of the public
are calling for the majority of U.S. forces to pull out as quickly as
possible and for Washington to shift from an expensive counterin-
surgency strategy, in which tens of thousands of U.S. and nato troops
protect the Afghan population, to a cheaper counterterrorism strategy,
in which special operations forces strike at terrorist leaders in Afghan-
istan and Pakistan and the Afghans are left largely on their own.
The counterinsurgency strategy began in earnest in 2009, when
the United States raised its total number of troops in Afghanistan to
nearly 100,000. This Afghan surge led to tactical success: Kandahar and
Helmand were largely secured, and the number of Afghan police
and army soldiers nearly doubled. But it was expensive. In 2011, the
U.S. Congress authorized nearly $114 billion for the eort, roughly a
fourth of the entire cost of the Afghan war since 2001. Given the
current economic climate, such high annual outlays are no longer
sustainable. Last June, U.S. President Barack Obama announced
that 33,000 American troops will leave Afghanistan by the end of 2012
and that Afghan forces will take the lead in the countrys security by
the end of 2014. Although it remains undecided exactly how fast the
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withdrawal will proceed after 2012 and what sort of U.S. presence
will remain after 2014, Washington is facing strong domestic pressure
to bring its troops home and to focus on rebuilding the economy.
At rst glance, shifting to counterterrorism would seem the best
way to meet this goal. A counterterrorism approach would cut costs
by pulling out most U.S. ground troops. Special operations forces
would remain in the larger bases, with responsibility for launching
missions to kill or capture al Qaeda members, high-level Taliban
gures, and leaders of the Haqqani network. What is more, the U.S.
Navy seal raid that killed Osama bin Laden last May seemed to give
this approach credibility by suggesting that knocking out al Qaedathe
primary reason why the United States entered Afghanistan in the rst
placedoes not require tens of thousands of U.S. troops.
The problem with such thinking, however, is that it ignores the
question of what will happen in the country after the Americans
leave. More specically, it largely overlooks the ongoing and vital
role the United States is playing in advising, training, and supporting
the Afghan government and its security forces.
A few counterterrorism advocates, particularly Vice President
Joseph Biden, have called for the United States to keep military advisers
(or what they refer to as trainers, a term that denotes a noncombat
role) in Afghanistan after 2014, but such proposals are not detailed or
instructive enough. There is no discussion of how many U.S. forces
would ll this role, where they would be located, how long they would
stay, or whether they would go into battle with their Afghan counter-
parts. Amid the drawdown, U.S. military commanders, running short
on conventional forces and lacking orders to the contrary, would likely
relegate U.S. advisory units to big bases or dissolve them altogether.
Similarly, in the face of a military withdrawal, the U.S. civilian ocials
who work with their Afghan counterparts in the countryside would
likely pull back to the embassy in Kabul and a handful of consulates.
Thus, the soldiers and civilians most needed to hold Afghanistan
together would end up too far away from the areas that matterthe
provinces and districtsto make a dierence.
Such a counterterrorism strategy would be unlikely to hold Afghan-
istan together. Once U.S. forces pulled out, Taliban ghters based in
Pakistan would escalate their attacks against key Afghan provinces. At
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March/April2012 [1 13]
War Downsized
the same time, they would work to gain popular support by exploiting
the tendency of the Afghan government and its domestic allies to mis-
treat the population and to squabble with one another, a process that
would only be magnied once U.S. civilian advisers were gone. Although
they have increased in number and ability in recent years, the Afghan
army, police, and tribal militias would not be able to fend o the Taliban
without the help of U.S. forces. (They lack the capability to call in air
strikes, for example, and suer from logistical shortcomings.)
The Afghan central government would likely lose control of the
Pashtun east and south, the very ground the U.S. military and its allies
have fought so hard to secure. Kabul would become the frontline, turned
to rubble once more. Counterterrorism would
also get much more dicult: intelligence
would dry up as the Taliban scared Afghans
away from working with the government,
forward bases would have to be abandoned
as they were encircled by insurgents, and
Pakistans tribal region would become more
remote and harder to hit. The Afghan gov-
ernment, thrown on the defensive, would be
unable to prevent the return of al Qaeda to
the vast Pashtun heartland. In other words,
although a full counterinsurgency strategy
may no longer be sustainable, a pure counter-
terrorism strategy is scarcely more attractive, as it could cause Afghan-
istan to backslide, quickly and perhaps irrevocably, taking with it the
United States ability to combat al Qaeda.
From Washingtons perspective, giving up on eastern and southern
Afghanistan and accepting a heightened terrorist threat might be
acceptable if, in fact, there were no way to recoup a decades eort in
Afghanistan at a manageable cost. But this is not the case. Salvaging
the war will not require 100,000 troops. A gradual but steady with-
drawal that leaves thousands of U.S. military and civilian advisers in the
country after 2014, as well as special operations forces and airpower,
is a viable alternative.
In relying more on small, elite advisory teams, living out in the eld
and working side by side with their Afghan counterparts, the United
Not only can an
advisory strategy bring
about a stable, secure
Afghanistan, but it also
offers the United States
a strategic model for its
new age of austerity.
.
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States could enable the Afghan government to fend o the Taliban
at an aordable cost. This strategy diers dramatically from counter-
terrorism because it prioritizes holding Afghanistan together (many
counterterrorism advocates, such as the U.S. diplomat Robert Blackwill,
readily concede that a divided, Pashtun-less Afghanistan may be
the outcome). Not only can an advisory strategy bring about a stable,
secure Afghanistan, but it also oers the United States a strategic
model for its new age of austerity. Future challenges can be met,
and even prevented, at a low cost by the aggressive use of military and
civilian advisers.
the tactical edge of advi sers
The United States can draw on a long and successful history
of deploying advisers to ght insurgencies abroad, beginning in
1950, when U.S. Army Colonel Edward Lansdale and a few dozen
military advisers helped Filipino President Ramn Magsaysay defeat
the communist Hukbalahap Rebellion in the Philippines. A more
recent and well-known success story is El Salvador, where between
1981 and 1989, a handful of U.S. military and civilian advisers backed
by roughly $8.7 billion in aid (adjusted for ination) enabled the
government to hold o 10,000 guerrillas. The military advisers
oversaw the growth of the El Salvadoran army from 11,500 to 57,000
soldiers, and the civilian advisers targeted the root causes of the
insurgency by enacting a wide-ranging campaign to strengthen
democracy. The eort kept the insurgency in check until 1992,
when the loss of Soviet and Cuban aid forced the exhausted insurgents
to sign a peace accord. A similar process has played out in Colombia.
Since 2000, fewer than 1,500 U.S. military and civilian advisers,
together with over $7 billion in largely military aid, have helped the
Colombian government push back the farc (Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia) and reduce terrorist attacks in the country by
90 percent. Finally, in Afghanistan itself in 2001, fewer than 10,000
U.S. special operations forces, marines, and soldiers embedded
with the Northern Alliance and President Hamid Karzais Pashtun
allies drove out the Talibangood proof of what can be accomplished
by a few bold men.
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War Downsized
In all these cases, advisers focused on supporting a preexisting gov-
ernment (or local alliance, in the case of Afghanistan) rather than on
carrying out independent combat or counterterrorist operations of
their own. The host government and its armed forces functioned,
even if they were often ridden with problems. (For this reason, Iraq in
2004 and Afghanistan in 2006 stand out as examples where an advisory
strategy may not have been feasible, given that the host militaries were
being overrun.) In no cases above did an opponent have a marked
numerical or material advantage, such as in aircraft, artillery, or armor.
In short, as long as the security forces of the host country have the
motivation and basic combat skills to stand up and ght and are not
facing overwhelming odds, then small teams of foreign military and
civilian advisers can provide the tactical edge and political cohesion
necessary to fend o opponents, if not defeat them altogether.
In Afghanistan, advisers may not be able to fully clear mountainous
areas where the Taliban are strong, such as Kunar and Nuristan, but
they could prevent most of Afghanistan, including its Pashtun heart-
land, from being overrun by the Taliban. This would require a serious
commitment from the United States. Foreign advisers would need
to remain in the country well beyond 2014, until one of two things
happened: either the Afghan government reached a formal or informal
truce with the Taliban or Afghans on their own were able to make a
Taliban presence in populated areas untenable.
i mparti ng values
Thousands of U.S. military and civilian advisers are currently
based in Afghanistan. Teams of military advisers, ranging in size
from 12 to 28 soldiers or marines, are embedded with the Afghan
Ministries of Defense and the Interior in Kabul all the way down to
the army battalions and the district police forces on the frontlines,
often living, working, and ghting beside their Afghan counterparts.
Outside the isolated mountain valleys of Kunar and Nuristan, where
the local terrain has allowed the Taliban to win a string of victories, the
Afghan army and police generally get the better of insurgents in daily
operations. Afghan forces performed well last summer in reghts in
Kabul, Kandahar, and Lashkar Gah. Yet they still depend on U.S. re,
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air, and logistical supportand on their advisers to coordinate such sup-
port. A report last October by the U.S. Department of Defense showed
that 114 of 161 Afghan army battalions and 150 of 218 Afghan police dis-
trict forces could plan, execute, and sustain operations, but all still needed
assistance or advisers from U.S. and nato commands. According to
the report, no Afghan police forces and only one Afghan army battal-
ion was eective without foreign support. The critical shortcoming of
the Afghan forces is in air and artillery power, without which no army,
U.S. or Afghan, can easily overcome insurgents who are entrenched in
mud-walled villages. The Afghans rely on their U.S. and nato advisers
to call in artillery and air strikes. This is a technical issue not easily rem-
edied: requesting such strikes requires specialized training and encrypted
equipment, which means that U.S. and nato aircraft would be of little
use to Afghan soldiers and police if they had no advisers with them.
Afghan units also suer from delays in receiving reinforcements
and ammunition, a problem that, if left unchecked, can make an
otherwise motivated unit ineective in combat. By monitoring the
readiness of their Afghan counterparts and keeping an eye on levels
of ammunition and fuel, advisers can help ensure that supplies and
reinforcements arrive on time from Afghan stockpiles and depots.
Even military analysts who are skeptical of full-scale counterin-
surgency agree on the usefulness of advisers. For example, Bing West,
a military analyst and author who has been critical of the U.S. war
eort in Afghanistan, argues in his book TheWrongWar that the
primary U.S. mission in Afghanistan should be to transition to
scores of small adviser task forces. As West writes, These advisers
would go into combat with the Afghan forces, provide the link to re
support, and have a voice in who gets promoted. Military advisers
ll a larger moral role, as well. By teaching, watching, and living with
their Afghan counterparts, advisers impart values that will help build
an Afghan army and an Afghan police force that can not only defeat
the Taliban but also serve the Afghan people long after.
signals of commi tment
Inaddition to their military counterparts, civilian adviserspolitical
ocers from the U.S. State Department, development and governance
foreignaffairs
.
War Downsized
experts from usaid, specialists from the U.S. Department of Agricul-
ture, and many othershave been working in Afghanistan since 2001.
These civilians are often part of the provincial reconstruction teams
that are run by the United States or another nato member in nearly
every Afghan province; on the more local levels, 38 Afghan districts
have analogous district support teams. Civilians provide guidance to
provincial and district governors and work to improve governance,
reduce corruption, and drive economic development. Based on their
established relationships with local elders and government ocials,
civilian advisers also act as a key liaison with Afghan leaders when
military forces damage property, disturb women in a raid, or cause
inadvertent civilian casualties.
To be sure, civilian advisers face a complicated task: Afghanistans
political and social problems are vast. Government is overly centralized,
denying locals a say in their own administration, and corruption is
rife. On the district and provincial levels, governors, the police, and
other leaders have a history of stealing land, levying illegal taxes, ap-
propriating foreign aid, falsely imprisoning innocent people, and
even torturing prisonersthe sort of behavior that caused people in
Kandahar to turn to the Taliban in the rst place. A bigger problem
is that the central government and its alliesvarious tribes, mujahi-
deen warlords, and former communistsare not terribly united. For
centuries, Afghan governments have had to balance the countrys
many tribes and ethnicities, using promises of money or political
positions and threats of military force to keep them in line. Such a
system has proved unstable and allows the Taliban to co-opt groups
aligned with the government, as they did when they rst seized power
in 1994 and again when they took over parts of southern Afghanistan in
2006. Under the weight of these problems, it is hard to see how
the Afghan government could hold together against the Taliban on
its own.
Although there is no sure solution to these problems, civilian advisers
can go a long way toward mending them. In some cases, civilians have
been able to improve governance by reducing the degree of centraliza-
tion in the Afghan state. In Helmand, for example, British development
experts pioneered district community councils, whose members were
elected by tribal leaders, religious leaders, doctors, and teachers; these
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councils are now up and running throughout the province and give
locals a say in district government. Similarly, U.S. civilian advisers have
been able to reduce corruption and abusive behavior, such as in Kunar,
where they built a court system that is now overseeing public trials,
exactly the kind of fair and open process that experts have long called
for in Afghanistan.
Finally, civilian advisers have fostered unity among Afghanistans
disparate factions. In Khost, for example, U.S. civilians worked with
the provincial government to reach out
to the religious community in an eort to
ocially register more madrasahs; in the
process, local Afghan ocials engaged
dozens of Taliban foot soldiers, who were
then reintegrated into Afghan society.
And in Helmand, civilians working in
district support teams helped bring tribal
leaders back to the pro-government camp.
In 2010, they coordinated negotiations
between the Afghan government and the
Alikozai tribe in the hotly contested town
of Sangin that resulted in key tribal leaders pledging to oppose the
Taliban. According to Shah Jahan, one of southern Helmands more
powerful tribal leaders, the civilian advisers hold things together and
keep the district governor, police chief, and tribal leaders from ghting
with each other. The advisers bring with them mediation and alliance-
building skills, which will be needed in Afghanistan for years to come.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton touched on this point when she
wrote in these pages in 2010, Properly trained and equipped, civilians
are force multipliers. One eective diplomat or development expert
can leverage as many as ten local partners, and when local partners
build their own capacities and networks, communities become stronger
and more resilient.
Both military and political advisers serve one other purpose: they
signal commitment. Their presence would reassure Afghans that inter-
national forces will not surrender their country to the Taliban, a fear
that the Taliban have exploited. For example, Mullah Naim Barech,
the Talibans shadow governor of Helmand, sent messages to tribal
If the United States
wants to retain its
international
dominance, it will have
to tolerate more risks
and the sacrices that
go along with them.
foreignaffairs
.
War Downsized
leaders in 2010 and 2011 that the United States would be leaving by
2014 and that the Taliban would soon be back. As a result, a number
of tribal leaders started hedging their bets, not wanting to be seen
as allies of the government. Advisers countered these messages,
explaining that U.S. policy was to let Afghans take the lead in security
in 2014 but not to abandon the country entirely, reassuring most of
the tribal leaders. In this way, as U.S. forces leave the country, advisers
could act as a symbol of the United States continuing commitment to
Afghanistan and show Afghans that their support of the government
would not be in vain. The presence of military and civilian advisers
would also signal to nato allies and Pakistan, as well as to regional rivals
such as China and Iran, that the U.S. commitment to Afghanistan
will endure, albeit in a modied and reduced form.
low cost, high i mpact
Apolicy based on maintaining advisers in strategically important
locations need not drain U.S. blood and treasure. At the moment,
there are between 8,000 and 12,500 military advisers who work with
a total of 170,000 Afghan soldiers and 136,000 Afghan police ocers.
By the end of 2012, the U.S.-led coalition plans to have 195,000
Afghan soldiers and 157,000 Afghan police ocers in the eld; that
means that to maintain the existing ratio of advisers to Afghans, the
U.S.-led coalition would need to keep a total of approximately
9,00014,500 advisers in Afghanistan, a rather hefty number. Yet if the
United States and its allies focused on key districts in the east and
the south, the number of advisers could be kept below 7,000, not
including logistics and support personnel.
Meanwhile, roughly 1,300 U.S. civilians are now deployed in
Afghanistan, marking the height of what Richard Holbrooke, the
U.S. envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan before he died in late 2010,
called the civilian surge. More would not be needed. In fact, the
overall number of civilian advisers could be reduced as long as a core
team of State Department and usaid ocers remained with frontline
provincial reconstruction teams and district support teams. They should
serve two-year tours and be given adequate language training and a
small amount of funding to run low-cost governance programs, not
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Volume91No.2
expensive infrastructure projects. To save costs, these civilians could
move into the same locations as the military advisory teams.
What is critical is that both military and civilian advisers are
deployed in the eld, working with their Afghan counterparts. To do
their job, military advisers need to live with the Afghans, so that they
are close by when ghting breaks out. As the United States learned
in Iraq, rushing to the scene of a battle from a giant forward operating
base does not work. Time after time, Iraqi police and army units
under attack were left on their own, unable to call in air support, waiting
for U.S. military reinforcements. Most reghts last less than 30 min-
utes, and it is tough to get out of the front gate, let alone to the action,
in that much time. Nor will civilian advisers have much success if they
are cloistered in the U.S. embassy in Kabul and in a few consulates.
Similar attempts at long-distance advising failed to get a grip on
the poor governance and crippling feuds that nearly brought down the
Afghan government in 2006. If posted far away from local government
leaders and power brokers, civilian advisers will lose track of the intrica-
cies of Afghan politics and will become too uninvolved in day-to-day
events to react to problems. They need not live side by side with their
Afghan counterpartssuch a constant presence would cast a shadow
over Afghan sovereigntybut they should see them daily, which
means living out in the countrys provinces and districts.
Advisory strategies that look cheap in theory can end up being
quite expensive because of the security (what the military calls force
protection), medical, and logistical costs of keeping small teams in
the eld. The size and cost of an operation can quickly balloon when
factors such as U.S. soldiers to guard bases, dining facilities, and
administrative sta are included. For the advisory approach to work in
Afghanistan, the United States would have to forego these elaborate
comforts. The teams would be expected to live without the giant
bases and quick-reaction forces that now epitomize the Western way
of war. Although they might have some vehicles and small security
details, they would move and operate with the Afghans, and share the
same risks. Through such measures, the number of support personnel
could be held to well under current levels, as they were in previous wars.
Special operations forces and airpower would stay in place to carry out
counterterrorist missions and back up Afghan forces when needed.
foreignaffairs
.
March/April2012 [1 21 ]
War Downsized
The advantage of such a strategy is that it would be far less costly
than full-blown counterinsurgency and is in keeping with the U.S.
publics aversion to nancing an overexpanded empire. The total
number of U.S. troops and civilians in Afghanistan, including special
operations forces and air and support personnel, could be brought down
to 25,000, if not fewer, after 2014; based on research by the Center for
Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, this would cost only $30 billion
per year, almost a quarter of current operational expenses. If U.S. allies
also contributed to the advisory eort, the cost could be brought down
even further.
The strategy does carry risks: advisers would inevitably be killed
operating far from U.S. bases, away from quick-reaction forces and
ready medical care. But their loss, however tragic, would be bearable
if the overall eort enabled the Afghans to hold their country
together at a lower economic and human cost than keeping tens of
thousands of U.S. soldiers in the country. The only other alternative
would be to abandon Afghanistan, which would mean that the United
States sacriced ten years, thousands of lives, and hundreds of billions
of dollars for nothing. A little more patience and eort will go a long
way toward preserving hard-won gains.
Moreover, such a strategy would have obvious applications for the
future. The United States is facing a new strategic paradigm. Since
Vietnam, the countrys wealth has allowed it to prosecute a form of
war that minimized risk to its men and women. But that wealth is
running dry. If the United States wants to retain its international
dominance, it will have to tolerate more risks and the sacrices that
go along with them. Leaving small numbers of advisers in places
such as Afghanistan is one way to maintain inuence and accept
risk. Military and political advisers cannot solve every problem
sometimes large-scale interventions are necessarybut there are
many crises in which a few experienced soldiers and diplomats can
prevent a problem from getting much worse.
The Globalization
of Animal Welfare
More Food Does Not Require More Suffering
Miyun Park and Peter Singer
Miyun Park is Executive Director of Global Animal Partnership.
Peter Singer is Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton
University and Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne. He is
the author of Animal Liberation, among other books.
[1 22]
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948,
articulates the idea that it is wrong to exclude any member of the
human species from the circle of moral concern. This enlightened
vision was a tremendous advance over earlier, more restricted views
about who matters morally; yet it still excludes a far larger number of
beings who can both enjoy life and suer: nonhuman animals. They, or
at least those capable of feeling pain, which at a minimum includes
all vertebrates, are also entitled to concern. Pain is pain, irrespective
of the species of the being that experiences it.
Concern for the welfare of animals is not a new idea. In the fourth
century bc, the Chinese Taoist philosopher Zhuangzi said that compas-
sion should permeate relations not only between humans but also
between all sentient beings. Buddhist teachings consider caring for all
sentient beings a central ethical precept. The Indian emperor Ashoka,
who ruled in the third century bc, issued edicts against the unnecessary
killing and mutilation of animals, including hunting for sport. He
also established animal hospitals and promoted, but did not require, a
vegetarian diet. In seventeenth-century Japan, Tokugawa Tsunayoshi,
the so-called Dog Shogun, enacted various rules protecting animals,
16_SingerPark_pp122_133.indd 122 1/17/12 3:15 PM
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The Globalization of Animal Welfare
especially dogs. The Hebrew Bible requires that the Sabbath be a day
of rest for oxen, as well as for humans, and other texts command Jews
to relieve the suering of animals, even if they belong to an enemy.
The Koran, too, encourages Muslims to treat animals with kindness;
the Prophet Muhammad is said to have cut o the sleeve of his shirt
rather than disturb a cat who was sleeping on it.
The modern animal welfare movement started in the West. Beginning
in the early nineteenth century, frst in the United Kingdom and later in
other European states and North America, governments passed laws to
protect animals from at least some forms of cruelty, such as whippings
and beatings, and from being deprived of food and water. Western
states went on to extend legal protection to animals in industries, such
as those used in experiments, and, later, to those raised on farms and
slaughtered for human consumption. The European Union today has a
number of protections for agricultural animals, including the banning of
sow stalls for pregnant pigs, intensive confnement of young calves, and
barren cages for egg-laying hens. Meanwhile, national governments
and the global community have increasingly voiced concern for farm
animals, no matter where they may be raised.
But despite these advancements in domestic policy, including
various but limited animal protection laws, a regulatory framework
for animal welfare has largely been absent on the international level.
Although there have long been international agreements to protect
certain species from huntingfor example, the 1946 agreement that
established the International Whaling Commissionno comparable
agreements exist to govern the treatment of animals raised to be eaten
by humans or to produce eggs or milk.
In the past decade, however, the welfare of farm animals has become
an issue of international concern. In part, the shift has been caused by
the growth in international trade in animals and animal products, and
in part, by Westerners reactions to what they perceive as cruel practices
both in their own countries and outside their borders. Between 1980
and 2006, total meat exports increased more than threefold, dairy exports
more than doubled, and exports of eggs nearly doubled. This growing
trade in animal products has heightened awareness of welfare concerns,
as has the export of animals themselves. Last June, for example, an
Australian television program aired undercover video showing the
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Volume 91 No. 2
slaughter of domestic cattle who had been exported to Indonesia.
Workers were shown knocking the animals to the ground and strapping
them downfully conscious, in panic, eyes bulgingto await the
slaughterers knife. Such gruesome scenes were simply unacceptable
to the Australian public; shortly after the program aired, Canberra sus-
pended the export of Australian cattle to Indonesia until the Indonesian
government permitted inspections to ensure that slaughterhouse
conditions would be made more humane.
A new movement is emerging. With an increasing number of animals
being raised for international markets, and with a growing ability for
people to watch previously unseen footage of animal handling, policy-
makers, businesspeople, nongovernmental organizations,
and ordinary citizens are showing greater interest in
how animals are treated, wherever they may be. It is no
longer sucient for governments to be concerned for
the welfare of animals within their own borders: animal welfare
is quickly becoming an issue of international concern.
where s the beef?
Today, economic growth and development around the world are
leading to a rise in the demand for animal products. According to
the World Bank, increased global demand caused total meat production
in the developing world to almost triple between 1980 and 2002
from 45 million to 134 million tonswith the greatest escalation tak-
ing place in countries experiencing rapid economic growth, led by
China. According to the uns Food and Agriculture Organization
(fao), in developing countries since the early 1960s, milk consumption
has almost doubled, meat consumption has more than tripled, and egg
consumption has increased by a factor of fve. (Yet even despite the
increased consumption in the developing world, the average person
in an industrialized country still consumes far more animal products
each year: 181 pounds of meat, 459 pounds of dairy, and 29 pounds of
eggs, as compared with 68 pounds of meat, 110 pounds of dairy, and
18 pounds of eggs for each person in the developing world.)
The worlds farm animal population has grown to meet this rising
demand. In 2009 alone, more than 60 billion land animalsnearly
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.
nine times as many as the human populationwere slaughtered for
food. (This number included approximately 52 billion chickens, 1.34
billion pigs, 656 million turkeys, 521 million sheep, 403 million goats,
and 298 million cattle.) In addition, around 1.18 trillion eggs were
produced for food that year.
These huge numbers raise concerns about pollution, the soaring
demand for grain and soybeans to feed these animals, and the signif-
cant contribution that farm animal production has on global warming.
At the same time, the conditions under which the animals live pose
problems for their welfare. The vast majority of the worlds animal
products are supplied by intensive confnement systems, which deny
animals the opportunity to live in a way suited to the normal behavior
of their species. As the worlds appetite for meat, eggs, and milk has
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Volume 91 No. 2
grown, the intensive confnement model of animal production, ini-
tially developed in the years after World War II in Europe and North
America, has continued to supplant more traditional farming prac-
tices. Today, industrial systemsthose that purchase at least 90 per-
cent of their animal feed from other enterprises and house a single
species in intensive conditionsproduce around two-thirds of the
worlds poultry, meat, and eggs, and more than half the pork. And
these industrial methods place severe limits on animals, in terms of
both space and their ability to engage in natural behavior.
Given the sheer numbers of chickens that are raised for meat and
eggs each year, the poultry industry is arguably the most egregious
violator of animal welfare. Egg-laying hens, for example, are typically
kept in barren, wire-mesh enclosures known as battery cages. These
cages are so small that even if there were just one hen in each cage, she
would be unable to fully stretch and fap her wingsand there are
often at least four, if not more, hens per cage. Under such crowded
conditions, the birds are unable to establish their usual social hierarchy.
Subordinate hens have no way of isolating themselves from their more
dominant cagemates and, as a result, are likely to have their feathers
and bodies pecked by the dominant birds, resulting in injury and
sometimes even death. But instead of providing the birds with more
space or genetically selecting for traits to minimize feather-pecking
behavior, many egg producers simply sear o portions of the birds
beaks, often with a hot blade and rarely, if ever, with anesthesia. In The
State of the Animals 2001, a group of leading animal scientists called the
procedure a stop-gap measure masking basic inadequacies in environ-
ment or management.
The European Union banned the use of barren battery cages begin-
ning in January 2012. European producers must now raise hens in cage-
free environments or, at a minimum, use enriched cages that include
nesting boxes and scratching posts, which allow hens to satisfy at least
some of their primary behavioral instincts. Although these cages are an
improvement, they still keep hens in intensive confnement without the
means to behave in the ways that their instincts dictate.
The overwhelming majority of chickens reared for meat are also
raised in restrictive conditions, often in large sheds that can hold more
than 20,000 birds, packed so densely that each chicken has only as
The exportation of
industrialized animal-
production models has
inicted misery on
animals on an
unprecedented scale.
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.
much space as the equivalent of a single sheet of letter-sized paper. In
addition to the limitations imposed on their welfare by such confnement
practices, the widespread use of selective breeding has an adverse impact
on the well-being of tens of billions of animals each year. Simply put,
chickens are forced to grow much fatter and much faster than is natural
or healthy: in 1925, chickens reached 2.5 pounds in about 16 weeks;
today, most commercially raised birds grow to 5.5 pounds in less than
seven weeks. Such unnatural and rapid growth rates leave many chickens
debilitated, suering from bone deformities, gait abnormalities, ruptured
tendons, and metabolic diseasesdespite their being slaughtered
when they are, in eect, still juveniles. Reaching slaughter weight at
approximately 42 days of age, many birds cannot walk properly and
suer from other ailments because their immature bones cannot
support their abnormally heavy bodies.
Of the mammals eaten by humans, pigs are raised in the greatest
numberand may be the most intelligent of all animals commonly
eaten. Commercial farming methods have relegated these animals to
confnement in large sheds on bare concrete or slatted fooring with-
out any mental stimulation or basic comforts, causing frustration,
boredom, and physical distress. Female pigs, when they are about to
give birth, build a nest from straw or leaves and twigs in order to create
a comfortable and safe place where they can nurse their litter. But in
many of todays industrial production facilities, pregnant pigs are still
often caged in sow stalls so narrow that they cannot turn around or
even walk more than a step forward or backward, without any straw or
bedding material. Right before they give birth, they are often moved
into farrowing crates, which are metal enclosures scarcely larger than
their own bodies and constructed to physically separate mother from
piglets. It is in these barren and restrictive crates, which leave the pigs
virtually immobilized, that they give birth and nurse their young
although only for a fraction of the time they would in the wild, as their
piglets are prematurely weaned and soon taken away for fattening.
The sows are then once again impregnated. Although sow stalls for
gestating pigs have already been banned throughout the European
Union and are slowly being phased out in some U.S. states, they are
still widely used elsewhere, and restrictive farrowing crates remain the
common agricultural model.
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Volume 91 No. 2
These methods, developed over the past 60 years in order to reduce
the need for skilled labor, produce a standard product irrespective of
season or weather. And in the pursuit of eciency and economies of
scale, they have now spread from Western countries to many devel-
oping nations, particularly those in Asia and Latin America. The
result has been an unmitigated disaster for animals: more animals in
more places are confned in restrictive conditions utterly unlike their
natural environments and are pushed beyond their physiological limits
to produce ever-greater numbers of eggs, gallons of milk, and pounds
of fesh. It is a tragic turn of events that just as these methods are
being modifed or even phased out in the countries where they were
frst invented, they are being introduced in their old, unmodifed forms
in other countries around the world. The exportation of industrialized
animal-production models has inficted misery on animals on an
unprecedented scalenot to mention causing higher grain prices for
the poor, greater greenhouse gas emissions, and a serious threat to
human health, as seen by the rise of various zoonotic diseases and
the pollution of land, air, and water.
battle of the cowshed
The replication in developing nations of the worst forms of
intensive animal farming is grim news. But there is hope: people
in the industrialized world are beginning to show concern about
the treatment of animals beyond the borders of their countries. At the
same time, some developing countries already have animal welfare
legislation, although enforcement varies greatly, and others, including
China, are discussing it. Meanwhile, international regulation is making
some progress, as are corporate policies in favor of better farm animal
welfare. The question now is whether these gains can be consolidated
into a centralized and uniformly-agreed-on set of rules.
The European Union has been a leader in passing legislation
intended to improve the welfare of farm animals across national bor-
ders. To a large extent, this eort has been driven by public attitudes:
in March 2007, the European Commission released a survey called
Attitudes of eu Citizens Towards Animal Welfare, which found that
more than 34 percent of those polled felt that animal welfare was of
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.
the highest possible importance and gave it a score of ten out of ten
points, whereas only two percent deemed animal welfare unimportant.
(Overall, those surveyed gave animal welfare an average rating of
7.8 points.) And the European public is not merely content with
existing regulations. Although the majority of the eus most signif-
cant animal welfare rules (for example, bans on sow stalls, barren
battery cages, and individual confnement stalls for calves raised for
veal) were enacted in the late 1990s and early years of this century,
a resounding majority (77 percent) of those responding to the 2007
European Commission poll wanted further improvements to protect
farm animals.
There is broad public interest in animal welfare in the United States,
too. For example, 64 percent of those responding to a 2008 Gallup
survey favored strict laws governing the treatment of farm animals.
A 2007 survey sponsored by the American Farm Bureau Federation
found that 95 percent of those polled said that it was important to
them how farm animals were cared for, with 76 percent of respondents
saying that the well-being of these animals was more important than
low meat prices. And when these questions have been put to an actual
vote, the results have validated such sentiments: in California, for example,
a 2008 referendum to ban the standard battery cage and sow and veal
stalls passed with a 63 percent majority. Yet the United States lacks any
federally mandated protections for animal welfare, in no small part
due to eective and entrenched agricultural lobbies.
In China, where food production is not stringently regulated and
animals are often raised in dire conditions, public attitudes also favor
protections for animals raised for food. A 2005 poll conducted there
by the International Fund for Animal Welfare found that 90 percent
of respondents believed that they had a moral duty to minimize animal
suering, and 77 percent favored legislation to do so.
And there are signs that attitudes among Chinas commercial and
political power brokers are beginning to shift. In 2007, the director of
the Beijing Chaoyang Anhua Animal Product Safety Research Institute
and the president of the Chinese General Chamber of Commerce
signed a memorandum of understanding on humane slaughter with the
World Society for the Protection of Animals. The agreement calls for
eorts, including training, to ensure the humane transport, handling,
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Volume 91 No. 2
stunning, and slaughter of farm animals in China. As of August 2009,
more than 2,300 people from nearly 950 companies from dierent
parts of China had received training on animal welfare. Given the
size and scale of Chinas animal agricultural industry, these numbers
may seem insignifcant; what is important is that business leaders,
scientists, and other stakeholders in the country have made such a
commitment and are making available educational modules on the
treatment of farm animals.
Also in 2007, a team of Chinese legal experts submitted a draft
proposal of an animal protection law to the Standing Committee of
the National Peoples Congress. The proposed law would be Chinas
frst piece of national legislation on animal welfare and would aord
basic protections to animals on farms, in laboratories, and in the
entertainment industry, as well as to pets, service animals, and wild
animals. Although the law has not yet passed, its basic principles,
which acknowledge the need to protect animals and regulate the
treatment of them, are a sign of changing attitudes. Chang Jiwen,
one of the laws drafters and a researcher with the Law Institute of the
Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Xinhua News Agency
in 2009 that he is convincedalong with the enhancement of
peoples awareness of animal welfarelaws and regulations in this
respect will become more sophisticated and complete.
welfare goes global
Although national legislation plays a key role in improving the
welfare of animals raised for food, it is not the only answer. Indeed,
even in those countries with animal protection laws, monitoring and
enforcement mechanisms are limited. In a growing number of cases,
the consumer marketplace is driving new policies, and international
organizations are helping raise consciousness and fll the gaps left by
national laws.
The need to improve the welfare of farm animals has been ac-
cepted by a number of such multilateral bodies, including the World
Organization for Animal Health (known by its initials in French,
oie). Created in 1924 to combat the global spread of animal diseases,
the oie, aware of the link between the treatment of animals and their
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.
well-being, has expanded its attention beyond animal health to include
animal welfare. The acceptance on such an international level of the
importance of animal welfare is a strong indication of the global
communitys interest in farm animal well-
being. In 2008, more than 400 participants
met in Cairo at the oies second Global
Conference on Animal Welfare, where they
put forth a resolution stating that ethics is
as important as science in the development
of animal welfare standards. For the oie, a
scientifc authority on animal health and disease, to acknowledge
the ethical signifcance of the mistreatment of animals indicates a
momentous shift in opinion at the highest level.
Animal production practices not only infuence the welfare and
health of the animals themselves but also aect food security, the envi-
ronment, and community sustainability. In recognition of this, the fao
has joined the global call for improved welfare, recognizing the myriad
eects of how animals are raised for food. In 2008, the fao convened
a forum on animal welfare practices, which led to a report stating that
as human and farm animal populations continue to rise, the resulting
escalation of animal production raises a number of ethical issues, includ-
ing environmental sustainability and secure access to food, which must
be considered alongside the growing concern about animal welfare. It
went on to say, Animal welfare is coming to be recognized as highly
relevant to success in international development.
Soon after its 2008 meeting, the fao launched the Gateway to
Farm Animal Welfare, a Web portal that contains information on
diverse aspects of animal agriculture, including animal welfare, in
various countries and agricultural sectors. It serves as a single access
point for scientifc reports, case studies, training opportunities, expert
directories, events, and more. The gateway aims to facilitate information
sharing around the world, primarily for professionals and producers
in less developed countries. On the portal, the fao explains the impor-
tance of focusing on animal welfare: In many regions, a secure supply
of food for people depends on the health and productivity of animals,
and these in turn depend on the care and nutrition that animals
receive. But, as the fao goes on to note, animal welfare practices,
It is time for a global
commitment to reduce
animal suffering.
.
Volume 91 No. 2
despitetheirevidentpositiveimpacts,areinsucientlyappliedboth
ontraditionalandonindustrialfarms.
Theprivatesectorisalsohighlightingfarmanimalwelfareas
a necessary component of sound business models. In 2006, the
International Finance Corporation of the World Bank published
CreatingBusinessOpportunityThroughImprovedAnimalWelfare,
whichpointedoutthatconsumersaroundtheworldareincreasingly
demandingthattheirfoodbeproducedhumanelyandsafely,which
inturnmeansthatanimalwelfareisalsoimportantforcommercial
reasons,bothdirectly,byincreasingabusinesssoverallsustainability,
and indirectly, by addressing societys expectations of how animals
shouldbetreatedandhowfoodshouldbeproduced.
Justlastyear,theInternationalOrganizationforStandardization,or
iso,anetworkofthenationalstandardsinstitutesfrom163countries,
issueditsiso26000guidelines,whichserveastheinternationally
acceptedstandardonsocialresponsibilityforboththepublicandthe
privatesectors.Thenewdocumentmarksthefrsttimethatthe iso
hasincludedreferencestoanimalwelfare,requiringthoseobserving
thestandardtorespectthewelfareofanimals,whenaectingtheir
lives and existence, including by providing decent conditions for
keeping,breeding,producing,transportingandusinganimals.
Althoughsuchinitiativesrepresentwelcomeprogress,morework
needstobedone.Giventhatfarmanimalproductionaectsdiverse
communities, human and nonhuman alike, a collaborative strategy
thatunitesthepublicandprivatesectorsisnecessary.GlobalAnimal
Partnership,aninternationalcharitydedicatedtofarmanimalwelfare,
foundedin2008,embodiesthismultistakeholderapproach.(Oneof
theco-authorsofthisessayisexecutivedirectoroftheorganization.)
It brings together farmers and ranchers, animal welfare advocates,
animalbehavioralscientists,andfoodretailerstoagreeoncommon
principlesandtospeakoutwithaunifedvoiceforcontinuousim-
provementinanimalagriculture.Recognizingthediversityofanimal
productionmethods,thecharitysfagshipinitiativeisanassessment
program that contains dierent sets of progressively higher welfare
requirements covering nearly every aspect of on-farm production.
The5-StepAnimalWelfareRatingStandardsprogram,asopposed
tobinarycertifcationschemes,encouragesinnovationandempowers
16_SingerPark_pp122_133_Blues.indd 132 1/26/12 10:34 AM
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producers to move up the so-called welfare ladder. Participating farmers
and ranchers adhere to production standards and subject themselves to
auditing and certifcation by independent third parties. In less than
three years, more than 1,750 farms and ranches that together raise more
than 140 million animals each year have sought this certifcation. The
programs multitiered structure allows a wide variety of producers, from
small farms to large-scale operations, to participate. Each tier in the
program has its own set of comprehensive standards, covering basic
provisions, such as food, water, and shelter, and enhancements that
encourage foraging and other natural behaviors. These tiers lead to
progressively higher welfare practices, including prohibitions against
the transportation of live animals and against physical alterations, such
as beak trimming or castration. The multitiered system gives producers
incentives to improve their farming practices and modify their produc-
tion systems in ways that lead to better animal welfare. Higher ratings
serve as further information for consumers and, in many cases, allow
certifed producers to charge higher prices. Other stakeholders also
beneft from the program: retailers are able to oer wider product selec-
tion to meet customer demands, consumers are given transparent and
more accurate sources of information on how the animals were raised
for the meat they purchase, and, of course, the animals raised in these
systems enjoy better lives. Global Animal Partnership completed a
pilot program last year with Whole Foods Market, North Americas
largest natural food retailer, and is now in discussions with restaurants,
producers, and other grocers in a number of countries around the world.
Given the sheer magnitude of intensive confnement agriculture
in terms of the number of individual animals involved and in terms
of the impact on animal welfare, human health, and the planets limited
resourcesthe sense of urgency cannot be overstated. Whether one
spends his or her days in a corporate boardroom in India, a govern-
ment oce in Russia, a university classroom in Brazil, or a farm in
Canada, all who are involved in the global food industry, as producers
or consumers, have an obligation to fnd remedies to the problems
caused by the growth in intensive confnement animal agriculture
around the world. It is time for a global commitment to reduce animal
suering and to mitigate the many unintended and undesirable
consequences of raising animals for food.
A Farewell to Fossil Fuels
Answering the Energy Challenge
Amory B. Lovins
[134]
Amory B. Lovins is Chair and Chief Scientist of Rocky Mountain
Institute and the senior author of Reinventing Fire: Bold Business Solutions
for the New Energy Era.
Nearly 90 percent of the worlds economy is fueled every year by
digging up and burning about four cubic miles of the rotted remains
of primeval swamp goo. With extraordinary skill, the worlds most
powerful industries have turned that oil, gas, and coal into aordable
and convenient fuels and electricity that have created wealth, helped
build modern civilization, and enriched the lives of billions.
Yet today, the rising costs and risks of these fossil fuels are under-
cutting the security and prosperity they have enabled. Each day, the
United States spends about $2 billion buying oil and loses another
$4 billion indirectly to the macroeconomic costs of oil dependence,
the microeconomic costs of oil price volatility, and the cost of keeping
military forces ready for intervention in the Persian Gulf.
In all, the United States spends one-sixth of its gdp on oil, not
counting any damage to foreign policy, global stability, public health,
and the environment. The hidden costs are also massive for coal and
are signifcant for natural gas, too. Even if oil and coal prices were
not high, volatile, and rising, risks such as fuel insecurity and depen-
dence, pollution-caused illnesses, energy-driven conficts over water
and food, climate change, and geopolitical tensions would make oil and
coal unattractive.
Weaning the United States from those fossil fuels would require
two big shifts: in oil and electricity. These are distinctnearly half
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of electricity is made from coal, and almost none is made from oil
but power plants and oil burning each account for over two-ffths of
the carbon that is emitted by fossil-fuel use. In the United States,
three-fourths of electricity powers buildings, three-fourths of oil fuels
transportation, and the remaining oil and electricity run factories. So
saving oil and electricity is chiefy about making buildings, vehicles,
and factories far more ecientno small task.
But epochal energy shifts have happened before. In 1850, most
U.S. homes used whale-oil lamps, and whaling was the countrys
ffth-biggest industry. But as whale populations dwindled, the price
of whale oil rose, so between 1850 and 1859, coal-derived synthetic fuels
grabbed more than fve-sixths of the lighting market. In 1859, Edwin
Drake struck oil, and kerosene, thanks to generous tax breaks, soon took
over. Whalers, astounded that they had run out of customers before
they ran out of whales, begged for federal subsidies on national security
grounds, but Thomas Edisons 1879 invention of electric lighting snued
out their industry. Whales had been accidentally saved by technological
innovators and proft-maximizing capitalists.
As the world shuddered from the 1973 oil shock, the economist
Phil Gramm predicted that just as with whale oil, innovators would
innovate, capitalists would invest, markets would clear, and substitutes
for petroleum would ultimately emerge. He was right. By 2010, the
United States was using 60 percent less oil to make $1 of gdp than it
had in 1975. Now, the other shoe is dropping: since its use in the
United States peaked in 2005, coal has lost one-fourth of its share of
the U.S. electric services market to renewable energy, natural gas,
and ecient use. After just a few centuries, the anomalous era of
oil and coal is gradually starting to come to an end. In its place, the
era of everlasting energy is dawning.
Underlying this shift in supply is the inexorable shrinkage in the
energy needed to create $1 of gdp. In 1976, I heretically suggested in
these pages that this energy intensity could fall by two-thirds by 2025.
By 2010, it had fallen by half, driven by no central plan or visionary
intent but only by the perennial quest for proft, security, and health.
Still-newer methods, without further inventions, could reduce U.S.
energy intensity by another two-thirds over the next four decades, with
huge economic benefts. In fact, as Reinventing Fire, the new book
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frommyorganization,RockyMountainInstitute(rmi),details,aU.S.
economythathasgrownby158percentby2050couldneednooil,no
coal,nonuclearenergy,andone-thirdlessnaturalgasandcost$5
trillionlessthanbusinessasusual,ignoringallhiddencosts.Todays
fossil carbon emissions could also fall by more than four-ffths
withoutevenputtingapriceonthem.
Thistransformationrequirespursuingthreeagendas.First,radical
automotiveeciencycanmakeelectricpropulsionaordable;heavy
vehicles,too,cansavemostoftheirfuel;andallvehiclescanbeused
moreproductively.Second,newdesignscanmakebuildingsandfac-
toriesseveraltimesasecientastheyarenow.Third,modernizingthe
electricsystemtomakeitdiverse,distributed,andrenewablecanalso
makeitclean,reliable,andsecure.Theseambitiousshiftsmayseem
quixotic,butsometimestoughproblemsarebestsolvedbyenlarging
theirboundaries,asGeneralDwightEisenhowerreputedlyadvised.
Thus, it is easier to solve the problems of all four energy-using
sectorstransportation,buildings,industry,andelectricitytogether
thanseparately.Forexample,electricvehiclescouldrechargefromor
supply power to the electricity grid at times that compensate for
variationsintheoutputfromwindandsolarpower.Synergieslikewise
arisefromintegratinginnovationsintechnology,policy,design,and
strategy,notjustthefrstoneortwo.
This transition will require no technological miracles or social
engineeringonly the systematic application of many available,
straightforwardtechniques.Itcouldbeledbybusinessforproftand
spedupbyrevenue-neutralpoliciesenactedbyU.S.statesorfederal
agencies,anditwouldneedfromCongressnonewtaxes,subsidies,
mandates,orlaws.TheUnitedStatesmosteectiveinstitutions
the private sector, civil society, and the militarycould bypass its
leasteectiveinstitutions.Atlast,Americanscouldmakeenergydo
theirworkwithoutworkingtheirundoing.
mobi li ty wi thout oi l
The United States burnsone-fourthoftheworldsoil,halfin
automobiles(whichcomprisecarsandlighttrucks).Two-thirdsofcars
fueluseiscausedbytheirweight,yetforthepastquartercentury,U.S.
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cars have gained weight twice as fast as their drivers. Now, lighter
metals and synthetic materials are reversing automotive obesity.
Ultralight, ultrastrong carbon-fber composites can trigger dramatic
weight savings, improve safety, and oset the carbon fbers higher cost
with simpler automaking (needing four-ffths less capital) and smaller
powertrains. In 2011, lightweighting became the auto industrys hottest
trend. Fords strategy rests on it, and the United States could lead it.
So far, however, Germany has taken the lead: Volkswagen, bmw, and
Audi all plan to be mass-producing carbon-fber electric cars by 2013.
Ultralight, aerodynamic autos make electric propulsion aordable
because they need fewer costly batteries or fuel cells. Rather than
wringing pennies from old steel-stamping and engine technologies,
automakers could exploit mutually reinforcing advances in carbon fber,
its structural manufacturing, and electric propulsiona transition as
game changing as the shift from typewriters to computers. Bmw,
whose chief executive has said, We do not intend to be a typewriter-
maker, has confrmed that its planned 2013 electric car will pay for
its carbon fber by needing fewer batteries.
Electric autos are already far cheaper to fuel than gasoline autos,
and they could also cost about the same to buy within a few decades.
Until then, feebatesrebates for more ecient new autos, paid
for by equivalent fees on inecient onescould prevent sticker
shock. In just two years, France, with the biggest of Europes fve
feebate programs, saw its new autos get more ecient three times
as fast as before. Well-designed U.S. feebates, which could be
enacted at the state level, need not cost the government a penny.
They could expand customers choices and boost automakers and
dealers proft margins.
Autos could also be used more productively. If the government
employed new methods to charge drivers for road infrastructure by
the mile, its insolvent Highway Trust Fund would not need to rely
on taxing dwindling gallons of fuel. Information technologies could
smooth trac fow, enhance public transit, and promote vehicle- and
ridesharing. Better-designed layouts of communities could increase
aordability, livability, and developers profts. Together, these proven
innovations could get Americans to their destinations with half the
driving (or less) and $0.4 trillion less cost.
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Volume 91 No. 2
Rmis analysis found that by 2050, the United States could deliver
far greater mobility by making vehicles ecient, productive, and oil-
free. Autos powered by any mix of electricity, hydrogen fuel cells, and
advanced biofuels could get the equivalent of 125 to 240 miles per
gallon of gasoline and save trillions of dollars. By 2050, drilling under
Detroit could proftably displace nearly 15 million barrels of oil per
day1.5 times as much as Saudi Arabias current daily output.
Heavy vehicles present similar opportunities. From 2005 to 2010,
Walmart saved 60 percent of its heavy-truck feets fuel through
smarter designs and changes in driver behavior and logistics. Aero-
nautical engineers are designing airplanes that will be three to fve
times as ecient as todays. Superecient trucks and airplanes could
use advanced biofuels or hydrogen, or trucks could burn natural gas,
but no vehicles would need oil. Advanced biofuels, two-thirds made
from waste, would require no cropland, protecting soil and the climate.
The U.S. militarys ongoing advances in eciency will speed all these
innovations in the civilian sector, which uses over 50 times as much
oil, just as military research and development created the Internet,
gps, and the microchip and jet-engine industries.
U.S. gasoline demand peaked in 2007; the oil use of the countries
of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
peaked in 2005. With China and India pursuing ecient and electric
vehicles, Deutsche Bank forecast in 2009 that world oil use could
begin to decline after 2016. In fact, the world is nearing peak oil
not in supply but in demand. Oil is simply becoming uncompetitive
even at low prices before it becomes unavailable even at high prices.
savi ng electrici ty
The next big shift is to raise electricity productivity faster than
the economy growsstarting with the United States 120 million
buildings. Even though U.S. buildings are projected to provide 70
percent more total foorspace in 2050, they could use far less energy.
Investing an extra $0.5 trillion on existing or emerging energy-
eciency technologies and better-integrated designs could save
building owners $1.9 trillion by tripling or quadrupling energy pro-
ductivity. These straightforward improvements range from installing
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The world is nearing
peak oilnot in
supply but in demand.
insulation, weather-stripping, and caulking to using more ecient
equipment and controls, adopting better lighting design, and
simply making new buildings the right shape and facing them in
the right direction.
An even more powerful innovation, called integrative design,
can often save far more energy still, yet at lower cost. Integrative
design optimizes a whole building, factory, vehicle, or device for
multiple benefts, not isolated components
for single benefts. For example, in 2010, the
Empire State Building remanufactured its
6,514 windows onsite into superwindows,
which pass light but block heat. Requiring
a third less air conditioning on hot days
saved $17 million of the projects capital cost
immediately, partly funding this and other improvements. In just
three years, energy savings above 40 percent will repay the owners
total energy-saving investment.
Integrative designs expanding returns are even more impressive
when built in from scratch. From tropical to subarctic climates, new
passively heated and cooled buildings can replace furnaces and air
conditioners with superinsulation, heat recovery, and design that
exploits the local climate. European companies have built 32,000 such
structures at roughly normal capital cost and cost-eectively retroftted
similar performance into Swedish apartments constructed in the 1950s
and into century-old Viennese apartments. The business case would
be even stronger if it included the valuable indirect benefts of these
more comfortable, pleasant, and healthful buildings: higher oce
labor productivity and retail sales, faster learning in classrooms, faster
healing in hospitals, and higher real estate values everywhere.
Integrative design can also help double industrial energy productivity,
saving $0.5 trillion. Pumps, for example, are the worlds biggest user of
electric motors. Pumps, motors, and controls can improve, but frst
replacing long, thin, crooked pipes with short, fat, straight ones often
avoids 8090 percent of the usual friction, saving ten times as much coal
back at the power plant. When rmi and its industrial partners recently
redesigned existing factories valued at more than $30 billion, our designs
cut predicted energy use by about 3060 percent with payback times of
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Volume 91 No. 2
a few years. In new facilities, our designs were expected to save around
4090 percent of energy use while usually reducing capital costs. This is
not rocket sciencejust elegantly frugal whole-system thinking.
Adopting energy-saving innovations as quickly nationwide as some
U.S. states do today will require patiently fxing perverse incentives,
sharing benefts between landlords and tenants, allocating capital wisely,
and designing thoughtfullynot just copying the old drawings
(infectious repetitis). None of this barrier busting is easy, but the
rewards are great. Since the Dow Chemical Company embraced eciency
innovation in the 1990s, its $1 billion investment has returned $19 bil-
lion. Savings and returns, far from petering out, often kept rising as the
engineers learned new tricks faster than they exhausted old ones.
repoweri ng prosperi ty
The United States must replace its aging, dirty, and insecure
electric system by 2050 just to oset the loss of power plants that are
being retired. Any replacement will cost about $6 trillion in net present
value, whether it is more of the same, new nuclear power plants and
clean coal, or centralized or distributed renewable sources. But these
dier profoundly in the kinds of risks they involvein terms of security,
safety, fnance, technology, fuel, water, climate, and healthand in how
they aect innovation, entrepreneurship, and customer choice.
Choosing electricity sources is complicated by copious disinfor-
mation, such as the myth that nuclear power was thriving in the
United States until environmentalists derailed it after the March
1979 Three Mile Island meltdown. In fact, bad economics made orders
for nuclear power plants in the United States fall by 90 percent from
1973 to 1975 and dry up completely by 1978. Indeed, soaring capital
costs eventually halted nuclear expansion in all market-based power
systems, and by 2010, all 66 reactors under construction worldwide
had been bought by central planners.
Even after the U.S. government raised its subsidies for new reactors
in 2005 to at least their construction costs, not one of the 34 proposed
units could attract private capital; they simply had no business case.
Neither do proposed small modular reactors: nuclear reactors do
not scale down well, and the economies sought from mass-producing
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March / April 2012 [1 41 ]
Skeptics of solar and
wind power warn of
their fuctuating output.
But the grid can cope.
hypothetical small reactors cannot overcome the head start enjoyed
by small modular renewables, which have attracted $1 trillion since
2004 and are adding another $0.25 trillion a year. After the 2011
Fukushima nuclear disaster, John Rowe, chair of Exelon (the United
States biggest nuclear power producer), pronounced the nuclear
renaissance dead. In truth, market forces had killed it years earlier.
New coal and nuclear plants are so uneconomical that ocial U.S.
energy forecasts predict no new nuclear and few new coal projects
will be launched. Investors are shunning their high costs and fnancial
risks in favor of small, fast, modular renewable generators. These
reduce the fnancial risk of building massive,
slow, monolithic projects, and needing no
fuel, they hedge against volatile gas prices.
Already, wind and solar powers falling
costs are beating fossil-fueled powers and
nuclear powers rising costs. Some solar
panels now sell wholesale for less than $1 a
watt (down 75 percent in three years), some
installed solar-power systems in Germany sell for $2.80 a watt, and some
U.S. wind-power contracts charge less than three cents per kilowatt-
hourall far below recent forecasts. Solar powers plummeting cost,
a stunning market success, is ruining some weaker or slower solar-cell-
makers, but solar and wind power are extinguishing the prospects of
coal and nuclear power around the world. So is cheap new natural
gasa valuable transitional resource if its many uncertainties can be
resolved, but not a serious disappointment if they cannot, since higher
eciency and renewable energy should lower the demand for gas.
Skeptics of solar and wind power warn of their fuctuating output.
But the grid can cope. Just as it routinely backs up nonworking coal-
fred and nuclear plants with working ones, it can back up becalmed
wind turbines or darkened solar cells with fexible generators (renewable
or not) in other places or of other kinds, or with systems that voluntarily
modulate demand. Even with little or no bulk power storage, diversifed,
forecastable, and integrated renewables can prove highly reliable. Such
integration into a larger, more diverse grid is how in 2010 Denmark had
the capacity to produce 36 percent of its electricity from renewables,
including 26 percent from wind (in an average wind year), and how four
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German states were 4352 percent wind-powered. But U.S. and Euro-
pean studies have shown how whole continents could make 80 percent
or more of their power renewably by operating existing assets dierently
within smarter grids, in markets that clear faster and serve larger areas.
Diverse, dispersed, renewable sources can also make the grid highly
resilient. Centralized grids are vulnerable to cascading blackouts caused
by natural disaster, accident, or malice. But grid reorganizations in
Denmark and Cuba have shown how prolonged regional blackouts
become impossible when distributed renewables, bypassing vulnerable
power lines (where most failures start), feed local microgrids, which
can stand alone if needed. The Pentagon, concerned about its own
reliance on the commercial grid, shares this goal of resilience and
this path to achieving it.
Individual households can also declare independence from power
outages and utility bills, as mine has. In many parts of the United States,
a private company can now install rooftop
solar power with no money down and charge
the customer less money per month to pay
for it than the old electricity bill. These and
other unregulated services could eventually
create a virtual utility that could largely or
wholly bypass power companies, just as cell
phones bypassed landline phone companies
a prospect that worries utility executives but
excites venture capitalists. Today, solar power is subsidized, although
often less than fossil-fueled or nuclear plants and their fuel. But
sooner than those rivals could be built, solar power should win out
even without subsidies.
In 2010, renewable sources, except for big hydropower dams, pro-
duced only three percent of the worlds electricity, but for the third year
running, they were responsible for nearly half of all new capacity. That
same year, they won $151 billion of private investment and surpassed the
total generating capacity of nuclear plants worldwide by adding over
60 billion watts of capacity. The world can now manufacture that much
new photovoltaic capacity every year, outpacing even wind power.
The United States is a leader in developing renewable technology
but lags in installing it. In June 2011 alone, Germany, with less sun than
A world where
countries buy no oil
would have less tyranny,
corruption, terrorism,
tension, and war.
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Seattle, added 142 percent more solar-cell capacity than the United
States did in all of 2010. Stop-and-go congressional policies sank U.S.
clean-energy investments from frst place globally to third between
2008 and 2010. (Federal initiatives expiring in 201112 temporarily
restored the U.S. lead in 2011.) From 2005 to 2010, while the renewable
fraction of the United States electricity crawled from nine percent to
ten percent, that of Portugals soared from 17 percent to 45 percent.
In 2010, congressional wrangling over the wind-power tax credit
halved wind-power additions, while China doubled its wind capacity
for the ffth year running and beat its 2020 target. The same year,
38 percent of Chinas net new capacity was renewable. China now
leads the world in fve renewable technologies and aims to in all.
Legacy industries erect many anticompetitive roadblocks to U.S.
renewable energy, often denying renewable power fair access to the
grid or rejecting cheaper wind power to shield old plants from com-
petition. In 34 U.S. states, utilities earn more proft by selling more
electricity and less if customers bills fall. In 37 states, companies that
reduce electricity demand are not allowed to bid in auctions for proposed
new power supplies. But wherever such impediments are removed,
eciency and renewables win. In 2009, developers oered 4.4 billion
watts of solar power cheaper than electricity from an ecient new
gas-fred plant, so Californias private utilities bought itand in 2011,
they were oered another 50 billion watts.
a cooler and safer world
This new energy future oers a pragmatic solution to climate change.
Often assumed to be costly, reducing carbon emissions is actually
proftable, since saving fuel costs less than buying fuel. Profts, jobs,
and competitive advantage make for easier conversations than costs,
burdens, and sacrifces, and they need no global treaties to drive them.
In 2009, the consulting frm McKinsey & Company found that
projected greenhouse gas emissions could be cut by 70 percent by
2030 at a trivial average cost of $6 per metric ton of carbon dioxide
equivalent (the standard unit of global-warming impact). Including
newer technologies and integrative designs could save even more
carbon more cheaply, and thus could more than meet the United
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States obligations under the 1992 un Framework Convention on
Climate Change while saving $5 trillion.
Getting the United States o fossil fuels would transform its foreign
policy. A world where the United States and other countries buy no oil
because its price and price volatility exceed its value would have less
oil-fed tyranny, corruption, terrorism, tension, and war. Washington,
no longer needing an oil-centric foreign policy, could maintain normal
relations with oil-exporting countries and treat diplomatic issues on
their merits. The Pentagon would be pleased, too. Today, every one
of the U.S. militarys nine combatant commands must protect oil
assets and transportation routesfghting tanker-hijacking pirates o
the coast of Somalia or pipeline-attacking militants from Latin America
to Central Asia. The U.S. Army would love Mission Unnecessary
in the Persian Gulf; the U.S. Navy would no longer need to worry
as much about conficts from the Arctic to the South China Sea.
Proliferators, meanwhile, could no longer hide their intent behind
civilian nuclear power in a world that acknowledged its marketplace
collapse and the superiority of nonnuclear competitors. Nor could
they draw on civilian skills, materials, and equipment.
Phasing out fossil fuels would turbocharge global development,
which is also in the United States interest. Energy ineciency is one
of the biggest causes of persistent poverty. Oil purchases underlie
much of the developing worlds debt, and wasted energy diverts
meager national and household budgets. Developing countries are
on average one-third as energy ecient as rich ones, and the poor
often spend far more of their disposable income on energy than does
the general population. Some 1.6 billion people live without electricity,
leaving many basic needs unmet, hobbling health and development,
and trapping women and girls in uneducated penury.
Investments in new electricity devour one-fourth of the worlds
development capital. There is no stronger nor more neglected lever
for global development than investing instead in making devices that
save electricity. This would require about one-thousandth the capital
and return it ten times as fast, freeing up vast sums for other develop-
ment needs. If the United States, Europe, China, and India merely
adopted highly ecient lights, air conditioners, refrigerators, and tvs,
they could save $1 trillion and 300 coal plants. That is the goal of the
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Super-ecient Equipment and Appliance Deployment Initiative, an
eort announced in 2009 and supported by 23 major countries.
Developing countries, with their rural villages, burgeoning cities
and slums, and dilapidated infrastructures, especially need renewable
electricity, and they now buy the majority of the worlds new renew-
able capacity. Some remote villages are not waiting for the wires but
leapfrogging the grid: more Kenyans are getting electricity frst from
solar-power entrepreneurs than from traditional utilities. Such eorts
as the U.S. Department of Energys Lumina Project have helped bring
ecient and aordable solar-powered led lights to millions across
Africa. These projects improve education; free up kerosene budgets for
mosquito nets, clean water, and other necessities; and could eventually
prevent 1.5 million deaths from lung disease annually. Just by switching
from kerosene lamps to fuorescent ones, one Indian village got 19 times
as much light with one-ninth the energy and half the cost.
getti ng unstuck
The United States cannot aord to keep waiting for a grid-
locked Congress to act while the global clean-energy revolution passes
it by. While U.S. fossil-fuel industries guard their parochial interests,
Denmark is planning to get entirely o fossil fuels by 2050; Sweden has
even aimed for 2020. Germanys campaign for renewables and energy
eciency helped push unemployment in the country to its lowest
rate in a decade. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is winning her
bet that the Russian company Gazprom is a less worthy recipient of
German energy expenditures than German engineers, manufacturers,
and installers. Brazil, Japan, and South Korea, meanwhile, are catching
up in renewables. India has passed Japan and the United Kingdom in
renewables investments and aims to rival Chinas global leadership
in the sector.
As Washingtons clean-energy research-and-development budget
has shrunk, Beijings has soared. In 2005, Chinas 11th fve-year plan
made lower energy intensity the top strategic priority for national
development. In 2010, the 12th fve-year plan launched a $0.8 trillion
decarbonization eort, created the worlds largest carbon-trading
zone, and eectively capped Chinas carbon emissions. The countrys
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net additions of coal plants fell by half between 2006 and 2010, and the
overall eciency of its coal plants pulled ahead of that of the United
States. No treaty compelled Beijings leadershipjust enlightened
self-interest.
The United States halfheartedness raises a conundrum: if the
vision of an ecient clean-energy economy is so compelling, what
keeps all U.S. citizens, frms, and institutions from embracing it as
vigorously as a few states have? The answer is that markets outpace
understanding, disinformation and parochial politics abound, and the
road remains strewn with barriers, myths, and pervasive favoritism
for incumbents. But must Thucydides lament become Americans
fatethat each politician pursues self-advantage while the common
cause imperceptibly decays?
The chief obstacle is not technology or economics but slow
adoption. Helping innovations catch on will take education, leader-
ship, and rapid learning. But it does not require reaching a consensus
on motives. If Americans agree what should be done, then they need
not agree why. Whether one cares most about national security, health,
the environment, or simply making money, saving and supplanting
fossil fuels makes sense.
Wise energy policy can grow from impeccably conservative roots
allowing and requiring all ways to save or produce energy to compete
fairly at honest prices, regardless of their type, technology, size,
location, or ownership. Who would oppose that? And what if the
United States reversed the runaway energy-subsidy arms race,
heading toward zero? Let those energy producers that insist they get
no taxpayer largess explain why they are so loath to give it up.
Moving the United States o oil and coal will require Americans
to trust in their own resourcefulness, ingenuity, and courage. These
durable virtues can give the country fuel without fear; help set the
world on a path beyond war, want, or waste; and turn energy from
worrisome to worry-free, from risk to reward, from cost to proft.
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Reviews & Responses
The ideology and style of todays
GOP would have been utterly alien to
moderate Republicans of an earlier
era, such as Mitt Romneys father,
Michigan Governor George Romney.
The Missing Middle in American Politics Reihan Salam 148
Poker Lessons From Richelieu David A. Bell 156
Freedoms Secret Recipe Michael Mann 161
Not Time to Attack Iran Colin H. Kahl 166
Recent Books on International Relations 174
Letters to the Editor 197
associ ated press
Michigan Governor George Romney and his son Mitt, New York, May 1964
18_reviews_div.indd 147 1/17/12 3:21 PM
Review Essay
The Missing Middle
in American Politics
How Moderate Republicans Became Extinct
Reihan Salam
Reihan Salam is a Policy Adviser at e21, an economic policy think tank. He
writes a column for The Daily and a blog for National Review Online, and he
is a co-author, with Ross Douthat, of Grand New Party: How Republicans Can
Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream.
[1 48]
Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of
Moderation and the Destruction of the
Republican Party, From Eisenhower
to the Tea Party. by geoffrey
kabaservice. Oxford University
Press, 2011, 504 pp. $29.95.
The Tea Party and the Remaking of
Republican Conservatism. by
theda skocpol and vanessa
williamson. Oxford University
Press, 2011, 264 pp. $24.95.
After Lyndon Johnsons victory over Barry
Goldwater in the 1964 U.S. presidential
election, the once-mighty Republican
Party was reduced to a regional rump. The
Democrats won overwhelming majorities
in the House and the Senate, which they
used to pass Johnsons Great Society
legislation. Republicans, meanwhile, were
at one anothers throats, having endured
the most divisive campaign in modern
political history. Goldwater had man-
aged to win the Republican presidential
nomination over the impassioned
opposition of moderate and progressive
Republicans, who at the time may well
have constituted a majority of the partys
members. Moderates blamed Goldwa-
ters right-wing views for the defection
of millions of Republican voters.
To rebuild the party, a number of
moderate Republican governors banded
together to form the Republican Gov-
ernors Association, designed to serve
as a counterweight to the Republican
National Committee, which had been
19_Salam_pp148_155.indd 148 1/17/12 3:23 PM
The Missing Middle in American Politics
foreignaffairs
.
captured by Goldwater conservatives.
Shortly after the election, the association
issued a statement, sponsored by Michi-
gan Governor George Romney and other
leading moderates, calling for a more
inclusive gop and criticizing Goldwaters
campaign. Stung by the failure of many
moderates to actively support or even
formally endorse his candidacy, Goldwater
retorted that he needed no lessons in
maintaining unity, having urged party
members in 1960 to look past philosophical
dierences and pull together to support
Richard Nixons presidential candidacy.
Goldwater wrote a letter to Romney
dripping with contempt: Now lets get
to 1964 and ask ourselves who it was in
the Party who said, in eect, if I cant
have it my way Im not going to play?
One of those men happens to be you.
Romney wrote a lengthy reply to
Goldwater, warning against European-
style polarization. Dogmatic ideological
parties tend to splinter the political and
social fabric of a nation, Romney wrote.
Worse, he added, political parties with fxed
ideological programs lead to govern-
mental crises and deadlocks, and stymie
the compromises so often necessary to
preserve freedom and achieve progress.
Romneys words seem particularly
prescient today, as polarized politics have
caused the U.S. government to seize up. But
what would the elder Romney, who died in
1995, have made of his own sons embrace
of a more orthodox conservatismthe very
kind of politics the elder Romney feared
would damage the country?
Mitt Romney began his political
career very much in the moderate mold.
In 1994, running for the U.S. Senate seat
in Massachusetts held by Ted Kennedy,
the popular liberal Democratic incum-
bent, Romney forcefully maintained that
he had been an independent during the
Reagan years. On abortion, he was frmly
pro-choice. While Republican candidates
across the country were rallying around
Representative Newt Gingrichs Contract
With America, Romney distanced himself
from it. If you want to get something
done in Washington, he said in a debate
during the campaign, you dont end up
picking teams with Republicans on one
side and Democrats on the other.
Romneys defeat that year did not quite
cure him of his moderate impulses. During
the battle for the 1996 Republican presi-
dential nomination, Romney, as a private
citizen, purchased newspaper advertise-
ments in New Hampshire criticizing the
publisher and candidate Steve Forbes call
for a fat tax, deriding it as a tax cut for fat
cats. And as a 2002 gubernatorial candi-
date in Massachusetts, Romney defeated
a weak Democratic opponent in large part
by touting his moderate bona fdes.
Yet as a candidate for the Republican
presidential nomination in 2008 and now
2012, Romney has shifted decisively to
the right, embracing the partys anti-tax
consensus, reversing his decades-long
support for abortion rights, and taking a
much harder line on entitlement spend-
ing. He has been careful to avoid being
out fanked on his right by his various
gop rivals, attacking Gingrich and
Texas Governor Rick Perry for being
insuciently tough on immigration.
And he has generally cheered on House
Republicans in their ferce opposition
to President Barack Obamas domestic
agenda. Departing from the more decorous
tone of his previous campaigns, Romney
has described the president as a crony
capitalist, a job killer whose policies
19_Salam_pp148_155_Blues.indd 149 1/26/12 10:34 AM
Reihan Salam
.
Volume 91 No. 2
will poison the very spirit of America
and keep us from being one nation under
God. Like so many erstwhile moderates,
Romney has survived in todays more
confrontational, ideological gop by fnally
picking a team.
commi tment i ssues
The dominant ideology and style of todays
Republican Party would have been utterly
alien to Romneys father. In Rule and Ruin,
the historian Georey Kabaservices
vivid account of the pitched ideological
battles that shaped the postwar Republi-
can Party, George Romney is cast as the
last hope of a moderate Republicanism
that has all but vanished. Born into poverty
in a Mormon colony in northern Mexico,
Romney rose to become the chief execu-
tive of the American Motors Corporation.
There, he succeeded in taking on the Big
Three car companies, scong at their
gas-guzzling dinosaurs and oering
sleek, fuel-ecient compacts that antici-
pated the later triumphs of the Japanese
automobile industry. Like many self-made
business executives of the time, Romney
felt a deep sense of moral obligation,
which fowed in part from his devout
religious faith. As poor African Americans
from the Deep South settled in and around
Detroit, Romney made it his mission to
better their condition. Shortly after his
election as governor in 1962, Romney
pressed for a massive increase in spending
on public education and on generous
social welfare benefts for the poor and
unemployed. During Romneys frst term
alone, Michigans state government nearly
doubled its spending, from $684 million
in 1964 to $1.3 billion in 1968. To fnance
the increase, Romney fought for and won
a new state income tax, which would
become a thorn in the side of future
Michigan Republicans.
What separated Romney from liberal
Democrats who were similarly eager to
expand government was his conviction
that he was doing Gods work on earth.
Today, it is entirely common for Repub-
lican presidential candidates to describe
the Declaration of Independence and
the Constitution as divinely inspired
documents, as Romney did. But in the
mid-1960s, as Kabaservice observes,
such religiosity was unusual, at least for
a moderate Republican. Kabaservice
briefy speculates that Romneys brand
of moralistic progressivism might have
resonated with many Christian voters who
instead embraced a harder-edged form
of conservatism infused with evangelical
fervor. But Romneys political program
was badly undermined by the 1967 Detroit
riots, which discredited the notion, fairly
or not, that large-scale social spending was
the most eective route to social uplift, at
least among conservatives.
Disagreements on race and the Vietnam
War fueled the split in the late 1960s
between the radical New Left and the
liberal Democratic establishment. But
the upheaval of the late 1960s also divided
the Republicans. Conservatives of that
era saw themselves as defending the United
States founding ideals against communism
abroad and radicalism at home. Moderates,
in contrast, sought to modernize the gop:
to keep up with the baby boomers shifting
sensibilities on social issues and to share
in their embrace of a more diverse and
dynamic society. Some even praised what
they saw, perhaps naively, as the freedom-
loving spirit of the antiwar movement.
Yet as Kabaservice relates, the moder-
ates never coalesced into a movement with
19_Salam_pp148_155.indd 150 1/17/12 3:23 PM
foreign affairs
.
March / April 2012 [15 1 ]
a coherent program and ideology, despite
Dwight Eisenhowers earlier attempts to
build a modern party that embraced the
New Deal and a vision of responsible
American global leadership. This failure
left moderate Republicans in an awkward
position. Those who shared the Demo-
cratic faith in activist government, tempered
by a desire for decentralization and fscal
rigor, found themselves gravitating to
the left. Those who shared conservative
skepticism of big government, tempered
by a recognition that Social Security and
Medicare were here to stay, found them-
selves gravitating to the right. There was
no glue to hold the two sides together.
Ultimately, Kabaservice argues, it was
this lack of coherence that doomed the
centrists within the Republican Party. The
absence of a rigid ideology freed them to
embrace creative solutions to emerging
social problems, which proved useful
when they were in power. But precisely
because they were so allergic to ideology,
the moderates were disinclined to rally
the troops or to wage scorched-earth
campaigns against their political enemies.
Even when they had the advantage of
numbers, as they did after Goldwaters
1964 defeat, they routinely failed to coordi-
nate their eorts, never managing to build
the kind of grass-roots fundraising network
that fueled the rise of the political right.
Instead of oering a set of clear
political commitments, moderate Repub-
licans instead asked voters to trust their
judgment, to have faith that intelligent,
thoughtful, evenhanded leaders would
govern well. After Vietnam and Water-
gate, however, Americans hungered for
politicians with clear convictions, leaders
who would never betray them. This was
true on the left but even more so on the
right. And the surest way to guard against
betrayal was, and still is, to force politicians
to commit themselves to a well-defned
set of propositions. In the 1960s, that
meant no recognition of communist
China; today, it means no new taxes.
There is no question that such
commitments reduce a politicians room
for maneuver and make legislative com-
promise dicult, if not impossible. But
political commitments also increase
democratic accountability, which is prized
by many voters, especially educated ones.
Although todays political landscape
might frustrate those who are eager for
pragmatism and bipartisanship, there
is no question that the Democratic and
Republican Parties represent distinctive
priorities and visions.
keynesi ans and connallys
Kabaservice is searingly critical of the
conservative movement that eventually
triumphed within the gop. His chief
complaint is the distance between what
conservatives have said and how they have
governed. In a particularly vivid passage
lamenting the failures of George W.
Bushs presidency, he writes that a
Republican Party without moderates was
like a heavily muscled body without a
head. After Bushs 2004 reelection,
Republicans held majorities in the House
and the Senate for the ffth straight
election, but, Kabaservice observes,
conservatives proved unable to achieve
their goals, largely because they lacked the
ideas the moderates had once provided
and the skill at reaching compromise with
the opposition at which moderates had
excelled. The irony of the decline of the
moderates is that it made the achievement
of conservative goals all but impossible.
19_Salam_pp148_155.indd 151 1/17/12 3:23 PM
Reihan Salam
.
Volume 91 No. 2
Indeed, as conservative rhetoric has
grown increasingly hostile to govern-
ment since the mid-1960s, the size of
government has continued to expand,
even when conservatives have been in
power. Bush himself, having promised
to restrain the growth of the government,
presided over an increase in federal spend-
ing as a share of gdp from 18.2 percent
in 2000 to 20.7 percent in 2008, reversing
the trend under his Democratic prede-
cessor. And between 1950 and 2009, state
and local spending increased as a share
of gdp from 7.7 percent to 15.5 percent.
Even in states where con servatives have
dominated, such as Nevada and Texas,
spending has increased at an alarming
rate as conservatives have aped their
liberal foils, responding to a growing
appetite for public services by increasing
spending rather than by improving the
productivity and eciency of existing
institutions. And at the federal level,
conservatives have generally acquiesced
to increased spending while refusing to
levy taxes high enough to pay for it.
In eect, this has meant delivering big
gov ernment while only charging for small
governmenta politically attractive prop-
osition that has proved fscally ruinous.
Moderate Republicans have been
among those most attuned to the perils
of such hypocrisy. During the late 1960s,
a number of moderate Republicans
such as those associated with the Ripon
Society, a think tank that served as an
incubator for centrist policiescorrectly
predicted that a southernized gop, shaped
by a fusion of conservatism and populism,
would have an enormous appetite for
federal subsidies in the form of defense
spending, oil allowances, and agricultural
supports, Kabaservice writes. Indeed, the
conservative appetite for federal spending
grew ever more voracious in the decades
that followed. Call it redistribution for
me, but not for thee.
As president, Nixon ratifed the
ascendance of big-government conserva-
tism with his embrace of John Connally,
a former Democratic governor of Texas
whom Nixon appointed as treasury
secretary in 1971. Whereas moderate and
conservative Republicans alike tended
to favor the decentralization of power,
competitive markets, and private initia-
tive, Connally was a dierent animal. He
was a foreign policy hawk and a cultural
conservative but also an avid defender of
subsidies and tax breaks for the defense
sector and energy interests, which fueled
the Sunbelt boom and further enriched
hundreds, if not thousands, of wealthy
conservatives. Nixon saw Connally as his
natural successor, a politician who could
cement Nixons new Republican majority
by bringing the southern white working
class into the fold. Although Connally
never lived up to Nixons high hopes, he
did help usher into the gop a generation
of statist southern politicians keen to
channel federal dollars to favored inter-
ests in their region. Connally still casts a
long shadow on the party: one can see it,
for example, when a conservative governor
such as Perry eagerly spends millions of
taxpayer dollars on Texas Emerging
Technology Fund, a program that a more
orthodox free-market advocate would
reject as an unacceptable intrusion into
the private sector.
We are all Keynesians now, Nixon is
sometimes reported to have said in 1971.
(In fact, his remark was less sweeping:
Im now a Keynesian in economics.)
But Nixons treasury secretary may have
19_Salam_pp148_155.indd 152 1/17/12 3:23 PM
[153]
left a more lasting mark on the Republican
Party than any economist. After decades
of gop support for subsidizing favored
industries from defense to oil and gas
to Sunbelt housing construction, a cynic
might argue that Republicans are all
Connallys now.
weak tea
The rise of the Tea Party movement briefy
seemed like an intriguing exception to this
general drift. The movement has often
been interpreted as a brand of populist
conservatism virtually indistinguishable
from the supply-side conservatism of the
Reagan era. But supply-side economics
was an optimistic creed that rejected the
idea of the market as a zero-sum game and
celebrated a vision of a fourishing society
in which everyone should, could, and
would be richer, freer, and happier if taxes
were low and gdp growth robust. The Tea
Party movement oers a far less sunny
worldview. Far from inheriting the opti-
mism of the Reagan-era supply-siders,
the Tea Party shares more with the Old
Right, the earlier form of conservatism
that Reaganite supply-siders derided as
root-canal economics for its emphasis
on spending cutsand, in some cases, tax
increasesas instruments of hard-nosed
fscal discipline. Like the Old Right, the
Tea Party conceives of the United States
as divided between those who work hard
and play by the rules and those who game
the system, whether by engaging in petty
welfare fraud or by seeking government
favors through lobbying and campaign
contributions.
This sentiment has not led to a
compelling critique of the countrys broken
fnancial and political systems, however.
The ferce opposition of the libertarian
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19_Salam_pp148_155.indd 153 1/17/12 3:23 PM
Reihan Salam
.
Volume 91 No. 2
Republican congressman Ron Paul to the
Federal Reserve has earned him consid-
erable standing among some grass-roots
conservative activists. But for the most
part, more realistic proposals to constrain
the power of big banks and reduce the
implicit and explicit subsidies that fow
to them have fallen on deaf ears. Indeed,
the Tea Party movement, like the conser-
vative movement of the 1960s and 1970s,
seems deeply hostile to technocratic
proposals of any kind, even those that
could foster a more decentralized and
market-oriented society.
In The Tea Party and the Remaking of
Republican Conservatism, the political
scientist Theda Skocpol and her co-author,
Vanessa Williamson, draw on a wide range
of sources to describe the movements
origins and worldview. Although anchored
by extended conversations with individual
Tea Party activists, the book adds little to
the thousands of newspaper and magazine
articles that have been written about the
Tea Party in the past few years, retracing
an already familiar portrait. Skocpol and
Williamson observe that Tea Party activists
tend to be relatively auent and middle-
aged or older. The vast majority vote
Republican, although some identify
as conservative-leaning independents.
They tend to be wary of claims of
technocratic expertise and prefer citizen
engagement over deference to elites.
Reverence for the U.S. Constitution is
an essential aspect of the Tea Partys
ideology, and members of the movement
often invoke the founding documents.
Skocpol and Williamson also anatomize
the three main components of the Tea
Party movement: grass-roots organiza-
tions; well-funded national advocacy
groups, such as FreedomWorks; and a
media nexus of Fox News and conserva-
tive talk radio.
Skocpol and Williamson attempt to
maintain a disinterested tone. But they
often cannot conceal their hostility to
the Tea Party, the gop, and conserva-
tism more generally, as when they warn
that Republicans will continue to talk
about America going broke and the
need to slash spending and cut taxes,
without getting overly specifc until just
before they seize the chanceif one
presents itselfto push through major
restructurings of Medicare and Social
Security. The reader is left to conclude
that Skocpol and Williamson believe that
there is something sinister about trying
to reduce the national defcit and that
eorts to restructure Medicare and Social
Security are wholly unrelated to the
federal governments fscal woes.
Still, Skocpol and Williamson rightly
diagnose a major weakness of contem-
porary Republican reform eorts. Because
conservatives have so strenuously made
the case against government and the
welfare state, they have undermined
their credibility as champions of reform.
Scholars and voters alike are now skeptical
when conservative Republican reformers,
such as Representative Paul Ryan of
Wisconsin, promise that they intend
to put the U.S. social safety net on a
sounder footing, not to destroy it.
There is no doubt that a reliance on
antigovernment rhetoric has created a
troubling vacuum at the heart of the
conservative project. The Tea Party
movement and its rejectionism now
defne public perceptions of the post-
Bush Republican Party. And it is true
that for years, congressional Republicans
have been extremely reluctant to take
19_Salam_pp148_155.indd 154 1/17/12 3:23 PM
foreign affairs
.
on issues such as tax reform and health
carethe kind of issues that consumed
moderate Republicans in an earlier era
because conservatives see them as a
political and intellectual dead end. Now,
however, some Republicans, led primarily
by Ryan, have advanced a number of
signifcant proposals, including a sweeping
Medicare reform and a base-broadening
overhaul of the tax code. Ryan has shown
an openness to the ideas of the avowedly
moderate Bipartisan Policy Center and
even to raising tax revenues, a move
that has long been anathema to conser-
vatives. Late last year, Ryan signaled a
willingness to compromise by joining
with Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon,
a Democrat, to advance a Medicare
reform proposalone that specifcally
addresses Democratic objections to an
earlier plan Ryan had proposed.
Around the same time, congres-
sional Republicans experienced a sharp
political reversal in a showdown with
Obama over extending a temporary
payroll tax cut. Republican brinkman-
ship, which had earlier threatened
chaos during a battle over increasing
the debt limit, was met with near-
universal opprobrium from the voting
public. After the Republicans gave in to
Democratic and popular demands that
the payroll tax cut be extended, Obama
experienced an immediate surge in his
approval ratings.
Conservative Republicans and their
Tea Party supporters were chastened by
this defeat, and the Tea Partys grip on
the gop shows some signs of loosening.
But moderate Republicanism will not
return as a bona fde movement any-
time soon, despite the eorts of right-
of-center public intellectuals such as
David Frum and David Brooks. The social
group that contributed so heavily to the
moderate movement of yesteryear
upper-middle-class social liberals who
live in big cities and their suburbshas
shifted overwhelmingly to the Demo-
cratic Party, and it seems unlikely that
those voters will ever return to the
gop. Yet the moderates fexibility and
pragmatism are experiencing a tentative
renaissance, as younger conservatives, led
by fgures such as Ryan, face up to their
movements shortcomings. Moderate
Republicans may no longer exist, but
their legacy persists, and conservative
Republicans will need to recapture
the moderates creativity and problem-
solving impulses if they ever hope to
take power, hold on to it, and govern
eectively.
19_Salam_pp148_155.indd 155 1/17/12 3:23 PM
Review Essay
Poker Lessons From Richelieu
A Portrait of the Statesman as Gambler
David A. Bell
[156]
David A. Bell is Sidney and Ruth Lapidus Professor in the Era of North
Atlantic Revolutions at Princeton University and the author, most recently, of
The First Total War.
minence: Cardinal Richelieu and the
Rise of France. by jean-vincent
blanchard. Walker and Company,
2011, 320 pp. $30.00.
Armand-Jean du Plessis, better known
to history as Cardinal Richelieu (1585
1642), spent most of his career contending
for and then exercising control over a
deeply divided, indebted, and dysfunctional
superpower. His countrys politics were
vicious, and its government paralyzingly
complex. In short, if he were dropped
into Washington today, he might feel
right at home.
French historians have long hailed
Richelieu as the architect of the abso-
lute monarchy that dominated Europe
throughout the seventeenth and eight-
eenth centuries. Henry Kissinger, in
Diplomacy, dubbed him the father of
the modern European state system.
Even critics, such as Alexandre Dumas,
who made him the villain of The Three
Musketeers, often cannot help admiring
Richelieus icy savoir-faire, which is
captured in the famous portrait by
Philippe de Champaigne that adorns
the cover of Jean-Vincent Blanchards
new biography. As Richelieu intended,
it shows a master political player with
the ruthlessness necessary to achieve
his goals, chief among them raising
France to greatness.
Richelieu was indeed a model states-
man, but not for the reasons usually given.
Despite his long-standing reputation
(which Blanchard largely endorses), the
cardinal was not really a great institution
builder, still less someone bent on making
France what Blanchard calls a modern
administrative state. Nor do Kissingers
claims about Richelieu inaugurating an
international order based on raison dtat
hold up. The cardinal was hardly the frst
20_Bell_pp156_160.indd 156 1/17/12 3:26 PM
Poker Lessons From Richelieu
foreign affairs
.
European statesman to place national
interest above moral or religious impera-
tives, and the modern European state
system, with its power balancing and
alliances, did not really take frm shape
until the Peace of Westphalia, six years
after Richelieus death. Richelieu was,
however, one of the greatest examples
in history of the politician as high-stakes
gambler, notable less for what he did
than for how he did it.
Richelieus qualities as a statesman
emerge most sharply when he is com-
pared with other leaders of the period
particularly his great rival, Spains chief
minister, the Count-Duke of Olivares, who
lacked both the cardinals keen foresight
and his taste for risk but nonetheless
came close to defeating him on many
occasions. For this reason, the single
best recent treatment of Richelieu remains
the British historian J. H. Elliotts
brilliant 1984 study Richelieu and Olivares.
Blanchards biography is engaging and
well written but has a more sprawling
and somewhat thinner feel. As a spe-
cialist in seventeenth-century literature,
Blanchard has trouble situating Richelieu
in the broader sweep of European
history, particularly when it comes to
the complex dynamics of ancien rgime
administration and diplomacy. Still, he
has read the most important primary
sources carefully and has a good eye
for colorfully illustrative passages, along
with a genuine sensitivity to his subjects
personal strengths and weaknesses.
Those who know Richelieu only from
the movies will find in Blanchards
pages a very human character who
triumphed in a setting far more fright-
ening than anything Hollywood has
recently devised.
orbi ti ng j upi ter
The tone of Richelieus career was set
by the savage and unpredictable political
culture into which he emerged. The
frst two kings of France in his lifetime,
Henry III and Henry IV, were both
assassinated. The next king, Louis XIII,
had his chief minister, Concino Concini,
shot in the street, after which the mans
naked body was ripped to pieces on the
Pont Neuf. (Some reports claimed that
members of the frenzied crowd even
cooked and ate Concinis heart.) Several
other leading fgures of the period ended
their days on the executioners block,
including the unhappy Comte de Chalais,
whose headsman bungled the job and
ended up frantically chopping away at his
screaming victim with a small hatchet.
Richelieu himself was regularly in
danger of meeting a similar fate. Chalais
had plotted to have him stabbed to death,
and another enemy tried to put a bomb
under the seat of his carriage. Richelieu
was Concinis protg, and himself
escaped from the angry Parisian crowds
only because he had the presence of mind
to order his retainers to start shouting,
Vive le roi! (Long live the king!). Surviv-
ing in such a milieu, to say nothing of
fourishing, required brilliant timing,
courage, an uncanny ability to read and
manipulate others, and a willingness to
take dramatic risksall qualities Richelieu
had in abundance.
Richelieu rose to national prominence
during a particularly perilous time, the
years following the assassination of
Henry IV in 1610. The popular monarchs
successor, Louis XIII, was just eight years
old when he took the throne and grew into
an awkward, insecure youth with a bad
20_Bell_pp156_160.indd 157 1/17/12 3:26 PM
David A. Bell
.
Volume 91 No. 2
stutter, psychologically overwhelmed by
his ferociously ambitious mother, Marie de
Mdicis, who served as his regent. Sensing
an opportunity to claw back some power
from the monarchy, French nobles staged
a series of revolts, and eventually Louis
rebelled against his mother and sought
to take control of the government in his
own right. (One step in this process was
the killing of Concini, who had been
Maries favorite adviser.)
It was Marie who originally saw the
potential in Richelieuat the start of this
period, a relatively minor noble from
western France who had joined the clergy
merely to secure his familys rights to the
revenues of a bishopric. She quickly brought
him into the inner circles of power, placing
him in charge of French foreign policy in
1616. In 1618, after war broke out between
mother and son, Louis banished Richelieu
to Avignon. But the young bishop man-
aged to convince the king of his loyalty and
proved instrumental in bringing about a
family reconciliation of sorts. Following
the 1621 death of Louis chief adviser, the
Duc de Luynes, Richelieu came to the fore,
eventually becoming the kings most trusted
and important councilor. In 1622, the pope
agreed to make him a cardinal.
For the next two decades, Richelieu was
a crucial player in French and European
politics, but with his position resting on
his ability to please and manipulate his
vain, stubborn, and temperamental royal
masterwhom Blanchard nicely describes
as worn out by inner torments, military
battles, and furious hunting. As a Spanish
diplomat of the time put it, Richelieu had
come closer to Jupiter, but also to his
thunder. Blanchard might have dwelt
somewhat more on this fascinating
relationship, in which Richelieu not
only fattered the king endlessly but also
made sure the monarch was surrounded by
attractive young men. Above all, Richelieu
became a mentor to Louis, someone able
to scold the king for his shortcomings,
sometimes even in public.
As Richelieus star and infuence rose,
Marie grew resentful of her former protg,
and a showdown became inevitable. On
November 11, 1630, Marie exploded at the
cardinal in front of the king, showering
him with insults and forcing him to beg
for mercy on his knees. Louis, apparently
struck dumb by the outburst, left without
acknowledging Richelieu, and Maries
supporters rejoiced that their nemesis
the cardinal had fallen. That evening, the
king summoned Richelieu to his hunting
lodge at Versaillesfor his execution, the
cardinal thought, assuming he had fnally
lost the high-stakes poker game of court
politics. Overcoming his urge to fee,
Richelieu obeyed the kings command
and discovered that he was in fact being
restored to royal favor, in an episode that
would become known as the Day of the
Dupes, with Maries leading allies arrested
instead the next morning. By 1642, Louis
could write to Richelieu, I have never
loved you so much. We have been together
for too long ever to be separated.
the gambler
Richelieus statecraft involved as much
dangerous risk taking as his domestic
political career. In 1618, what would become
known as the Thirty Years War broke
outEuropes last great spasm of religious
warfare, in which a furious confict between
a series of Protestant states, on one side,
and the House of Hapsburg and its Catho-
lic allies, on the other, tore the center of
the continent apart. France, a Catholic
20_Bell_pp156_160.indd 158 1/17/12 3:26 PM
foreign affairs
.
March / April 2012 [159] [159]
state itself, nevertheless intervened on
the Protestant side, hoping to supplant the
Austrian and Spanish Hapsburgs as
the strongest power in Europe.
Richelieu initially felt that France could
do no more than subsidize Protestant
eorts and engage in strictly limited
military campaigns. Ironically, he feared
treachery from the Huguenots, Frances
own small Protestant minority, who had
lingering grievances against the French
state and control of several strategic towns,
including the Atlantic port of La Rochelle.
Realizing that he had to address the
Huguenot threat before intervening
seriously abroad, in 1627 Richelieu laid
siege to La Rochelle and starved the city
into submission. (By the end of the opera-
tion, even the rats had disappeared, and
the starving locals were reduced to eating
boiled shoe leather.)
Then, Richelieu made one of his
boldest moves. With France exhausted
and indebted, he quickly raised another
army and sent it on the dangerous route
across the Alps into northern Italy, where
an unstable political situation oered
France the chance to break the Hapsburgs
extended supply lines. The gamble paid
o, and a few months after the fall of
La Rochelle, Richelieu and Louis watched
French forces storm in triumph across
the northern Italian plains.
After its victory in Italy, France contin-
ued to encourage and subsidize Protestant
powers, such as the Netherlands and
Sweden, without committing fully to the
broader war. A series of Catholic victories
in the early 1630s, however, fnally con-
vinced Richelieu to go all in, and in May
1635, he sent a gaudily dressed herald
across the border to Spanish-ruled Brussels
to issue a formal declaration of war.
At frst, the gambit seemed to go
terribly wrong. Spanish forces invaded
Frances northern provinces in the summer
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David A. Bell
.
Volume 91 No. 2
of 1636, capturing several strategic fortresses
and coming within a days ride of the
capital. Panicky crowds fooded the streets
of Paris calling for Richelieus head.
The cardinal fell into a deep despair.
Yet Franois-Joseph le Clerc du Tremblay,
the so-called Gray Eminence, who stayed
at Richelieus side throughout much of
his career, managed to rouse him, and
recovering his nerve, Frances chief min-
ister walked out onto the Pont Neuf to
much the same spot where his predecessor,
Concini, had been butchered two decades
earlier. Admiring his nerve, the crowd
cheered the man it had just been cursing.
Meanwhile, the French armies held, then
gained a respite when the Spanish broke
o their oensive to rebu an attack from
the Dutch. Over the next six yearsthe
last six years of Richelieus lifeFrance
seized large new territories and established
itself as a leading power in Europe.
the Cardi nal s Vi rtues
Many today might dismiss Richelieus
brand of leadership as archaic, something
with little relevance to the far more
ponderous process of modern statecraft,
with its armies of bureaucratic function-
aries analyzing all policy options in
mind-numbing detail. Yet from Munich
to the Cuban missile crisis to nuclear
proliferation, recent history is replete
with instances of international politics
resembling nothing so much as a poker
game. And was not the 2003 invasion
of Iraq very much a gamble, with the
Bush administration having its own, not-
entirely-un-Richelieu-like power behind
the throne, manipulating an inexperienced
young leader struggling to emerge from
the shadow of his powerful parent? In
this sense, the survival skills that politi-
cians develop in their rise to power at
home may serve them surprisingly well
when they take on responsibility for
international aairs, and Richelieu may
oer a model of sorts.
As for his historical signifcance in
Frances long-term development, the
record is less clear. Richelieu won impor-
tant victories over his countrys great
rivals, Hapsburg Austria and Spain, but
he did not consolidate those triumphs.
He raised tax revenues manyfold, allowing
France to fght eectively in the Thirty
Years War, but in the process he squeezed
the peasantry and provincial elites so
brutally that he provoked a series of
ruinous revolts that culminated, soon after
his death, in outright civil war. And
although Richelieu improvised brilliantly,
as when he sent out agents called inten-
dants, armed with new powers, to help
collect taxes and control the army in the
provinces, he did not design permanent
new administrative structures.
It would take another monarch and
another chief ministerLouis XIV and
Jean-Baptiste Colbertto take the story
further in the decades that followed. They
were the ones who secured the French
states modern borders, who cooperated
more closely with provincial elites and
extracted even greater sums from the coun-
try with considerably less strife (in order to
wage even more ambitious wars), and who
turned Richelieus intendants into estab-
lished arms of the central state. Richelieu,
in short, did not create modern France nor
make it the leading force in Europe. But
his actions paved the way for his successors
to do so, which is no small feat.
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Review Essay
Freedoms Secret Recipe
Balancing the State, Law, and Accountability
Michael Mann
Michael Mann is Professor of Sociology at the University of California,
Los Angeles, and the author of The Sources of Social Power and other works.
[161 ]
TheOriginsofPoliticalOrder:FromPrehuman
TimestotheFrenchRevolution. by
francisfukuyama. Farrar, Straus
and Giroux, 2011, 608 pp. $35.00
(paper, $18.00).
Francis Fukuyama shot to fame with a
1989 essay called The End of History?
which he expanded into a 1992 book,
TheEndofHistoryandtheLastMan. His
thesis was a reworking of the end of
ideology argument propounded in the
1950s by Daniel Bell and others, with an
even more emphatic twist. What we
may be witnessing, Fukuyama declared,
is not just the end of the Cold War, or
the passing of a particular period of
postwar history, but the end of history as
such: that is, the endpoint of mankinds
ideological evolution and the universal
ization of Western liberal democracy as
the fnal form of human government.
The argument seemed hubristic, a prod
uct of the eras American triumphalism.
Two decades later, Fukuyama has
revisited the question of political devel
opment in another, more sophisticated
book, TheOriginsofPoliticalOrderthe
frst of a projected two volumes, with
the initial one running from prehistory to
the French Revolution and its successor
planned to take the story into the present
and the future. Fukuyama still believes in
the virtues of Western liberal democracy
but now asks where it came from and how
it might be sustained. At 608 pages, the
frst volume is long and dense, even though
written with great fuency, and few are
likely to read it cover to cover. But they
should, since it is a brilliant book dem
onstrating great independence of mind
and an astonishing breadth of knowledge.
the secular tri ni ty
Fukuyama starts by asking why only a
few nations behave like Denmark. That
small Scandinavian country, he notes,
21_Mann_pp161_165.indd 161 1/17/12 3:28 PM
Michael Mann
[162] foreignaffairs
.
Volume91No.2
combines three elements essential to
political freedom: an orderly and ecient
state, the rule of law, and government
accountability to the people. The miracle
of modern politics, he argues, is the
balancing of a powerful, eective state with
a transparent legal system and representa
tive assemblies. As he demonstrates in a
survey of political regimes across history,
the combination of all three components
in a stable liberal democracy is a rarity,
generated by long and winding historical
paths and much good fortune.
Fukuyamas emphasis on an orderly and
ecient state is notable and represents
just one of his deviations from standard
liberal theory, with its emphasis on free
markets and small government as the
recipes for progress and liberty. Fukuyama
loves to take on opposing arguments,
politely laying them out before declaring
that, unfortunately, they bear no relation
to reality. Against social contract theory,
for example, he writes, Human beings
never existed in a presocial state. The idea
that human beings at one time existed as
isolated individuals, who interacted either
through anarchic violence (Hobbes) or
in pacifc ignorance of one another
(Rousseau), is not correct.
As for that economic favorite, the
tragedy of the commons, in which com
monly held property supposedly stifes
individuals drives to improve it, he calls
it a myth. There is no evidence anywhere,
he says, that an absence of private property
rights has been a problem for economic
or political development. Nor must the
legal protection of property rights be
absolute for development to occur; such
protections must only be good enough,
as they were in early modern Europe or
contemporary China. (He might have
benefted here from the work of the
political scientist Jean Oi and the sociolo
gist Andrew Walder, who usefully write
about the contemporary Chinese case by
considering property rights as a bundle,
including rights to control property,
derive income from it, and transfer it.)
Such forays against utilitarianism make
Fukuyama a cardcarrying sociologist,
and sure enough, the infuence of mile
Durkheim and Max Weber (although
not Marx) is clear and acknowledged.
He does not refer to Karl Polanyi (that
will probably come in the second volume),
but his text oers emphatic support for
Polanyis notion, taken further by recent
economic sociologists, that market econo
mies are not natural but rather always
embedded in social structures.
Weber also seems to have inspired
Fukuyamas argument that the main
enemies of the ecient, orderly state
are the patrimonialism, cronyism, and
corruption of family, kin, and tribal
networks that protect their privileges and
exact rents. He calls this the tyranny
of cousins, since it stifes economic and
political development, and he devotes
much space to examining how various
regimes have sought to combat it. China
developed competitive examinations for
its scholargentry bureaucrats to avoid
letting jobs go to the kin of power holders.
The Abbasid caliphs and the Ottoman
Turks used abducted slaves (the Mamluks
and the Janissaries, respectively) as ocials
and soldiers, since the slaves lacked blood
ties to any local tribes and could not pass
on their oces to their children. And
the medieval Catholic Church under
Pope Gregory VII introduced celibacy
for priests in order to avoid kinship
cronyism. Reliance on cousins and
21_Mann_pp161_165.indd 162 1/17/12 3:28 PM
[163]
tribalism, Fukuyama suggests, remain the
default modes of political organization
for humans when things go wrongas
they often do.
If Fukuyama is at his most insightful
and original when discussing the need
for an eective, orderly state, he is also
sharp in stressing the need for the rule
of law and accountability to substantial
numbers of citizens. Here, he sees pre
colonial India as a counterexample to early
China. China developed a strong state
that protected citizens against the tyranny
of cousins but left them open to the
tyranny of the state itself. The Indian caste
system produced a strong civil society
that protected subjects from state tyranny
but exposed them instead to cousins writ
large in the form of castes. A combination
of the two countries traditions, he notes,
would have provided a better form of
freedom, for that emerges when there
is a strong state and a strong society, two
centers of power that are able to balance
and oset each other.
Moving eortlessly from ancient global
history to its modern European counter
part, Fukuyama discusses weak absolut
ism in Spain and France, successful
absolutism in Russia, failed oligarchy in
Poland, and, fnally, accountable govern
ment in England, which, after 1688,
became the frst society to establish all
three elements of his secular trinity. Other
western European countries infuenced
by the Reformation, such as Denmark, the
Netherlands, and Sweden, also succeeded
in putting together the state, rule of law
and accountability in a single package by
the 19th century.
Thus, he argues, the three elements of
modern political order had evolved sepa
rately in dierent premodern civilizations:
Franklin Williams
Internship
The Council on Foreign Relations is seeking
talented individuals for the Franklin Williams
Internship.
The Franklin Williams Internship, named after
the late Ambassador Franklin H. Williams,
was established for undergraduate and graduate
students who have a serious interest in
international relations.
Ambassador Williams had a long career of
public service, including serving as the
American Ambassador to Ghana, as well as the
Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Lincoln
University, one of the countrys historically
black colleges. He was also a Director of the
Council on Foreign Relations, where he made
special efforts to encourage the nomination of
black Americans to membership.
The Council will select one individual each
term (fall, spring, and summer) to work in
the Councils New York City headquarters.
The intern will work closely with a Program
Director or Fellow in either the Studies or
the Meetings Program and will be involved
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and business writing, research, and budget
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required to make a commitment of at least 12
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Human Resources Offce
58 East 68th Street, New York, NY 10065
tel: 212.434 . 9400 fax: 212.434 . 9893
humanresources@cfr.org http://www.cfr.org
21_Mann_pp161_165.indd 163 1/17/12 3:28 PM
Michael Mann
.
Volume91No.2
China had developed a powerful state
early on; the rule of law existed in India,
the Middle East, and Europe; and in
Britain, accountable government appeared
for the frst time. Aware that this sounds
a bit like Whig history or British trium
phalism, he qualifes the argument by
emphasizing the role of contingency.
Development, he says, was complex and
contextspecifc. For example, the decline
in importance of extended families in early
modern Europe resulted in part from
the power of the medieval church. This
meant that an emerging capitalist economy
in Italy, England, and the Netherlands
in the sixteenth century did not have to
overcome the resistance of large corporately
organized kinship groups with substantial
property to protect, as in India and China.
hi story man
Religion and ideology play an important
part in Fukuyamas story. Where they
establish a power base independent of
the state, he claimsas have Hinduism
in India, Islam in the Middle East, and
Christianity in Europethe rule of law
develops most. Thus, he rejects reduc
tionist attempts to explain political and
social institutions as mere refections of
underlying economic or technological
structures: It is impossible to develop any
meaningful theory of political develop
ment without treating ideas as fundamental
causes of why societies dier and follow
distinct development paths. And in his
account of the consolidation and expan
sion of states through the ages, military
factors also often play a more important
role than economic ones. Indeed, my chief
criticism might be that Fukuyama tends
to give too little prominence to economic
power relations in general. But this is
hardly a dramatic failing, since the book
manages to cover such an enormous
range of subject matter and approaches.
Another concern is that Fukuyamas
attempt to ground social structures in
sociobiology is unsuccessful; listing
supposedly innate attributes of human
beings does not help explain their social
and political institutions. For example,
he points to a putative human propensity
for violence and war, citing the work of the
anthropologist Lawrence Keeley and
the archaeologist Stephen LeBlanc, who
have argued that virtually all primitive
and ancient societies repeatedly engaged
in warfare. But their conclusions have
been challenged by other scholars who
emphasize the enormous variability of
warfare across early societies, the surge
in warfare that accompanied the rise of
sedentary agricultural societies, and the
great variability in war proneness across
regions in more modern times.
Thus, Europeans were involved in wars
in nearly 75 percent of the years between
1494 and 1975 and never went 25 years
without fghting somewhere. In contrast,
East Asia witnessed a 300year period of
peace between the 1590s and 1894, broken
only by defensive engagements against
barbarian incursions and fve fairly small
twostate wars. During the preceding
200 years, China had been at war only
once. Yet in the period from about 750 bc
to ad200, as Fukuyama notes, the Chinese
fought at least as many wars as the Euro
peans later did. The Chinese leopard
changed its spotsas did the European
leopard after 1960. The point is that
warfare, although extremely important
in some social contexts (such as when
building up states and empires), is not
invariant. It derives not from human
21_Mann_pp161_165.indd 164 1/17/12 3:28 PM
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.
nature per se but from certain types
of societies and cultures with certain
characteristics. Fukuyama himself, in
fact, seems to recognize the limitations
of sociobiology, since he never actually
applies it to any historical context.
In any work of such breadth, there
are bound to be some nits to pick. Thus,
Fukuyama seems to believe the sizes of
armies given in early Chinese sources,
which are almost certainly vastly over
stated; he writes that Denmark had
representative government before 1800,
when it still had an absolute monarchy;
and so forth. But these occasional slips
are trivial compared with the larger feat
he has managed to pull o in covering
so much diverse material so accessibly.
Fukuyamas method is not to cite an
enormous quantity of historical scholar
ship but rather to rely on prominent
scholars in each area. He has chosen these
scholars well and is careful to present
their positions accurately. It is downright
refreshing to read a book of such breath
taking scope that manages to do so little
violence to the work of the innumerable
specialists whose insights it inevitably relies
on. The bottom line is that Fukuyamas
basic thesis is persuasive and he reveals
good historical and sociological sensitivity
throughout. The book is a great intellectual
achievement and leaves one hungry for
the next installmentwhich may be
more of a clihanger than readers of his
earlier work might assume.
Over the last two centuries, Fukuyama
writes, liberal democracies have managed
to discover a resilient political equilibrium,
balancing state power, the rule of law, and
accountability to citizens. But he warns
that past results are no guarantee of future
success. Continued legitimacy for todays
democracies will depend on their being
able to maintain an adequate balance
between strong state action when necessary
and the kinds of individual freedoms that
are the basis of . . . democratic legitimacy
and that foster privatesector growth.
Comments at the start and the end of
the frst volume show that he is deeply
worried by the current political situation in
the United States, and his recent article
in these pages elaborated on that theme.
The future of History might be a bumpy
ride after all.
21_Mann_pp161_165.indd 165 1/17/12 3:28 PM
Response
Not Time to Attack Iran
Why War Should Be a Last Resort
Colin H. Kahl
Coli n H. Kahl is an Associate Professor in the Security Studies Program
at Georgetown Universitys Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service and
a Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security. In 200911, he
was U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East.
[166]
In Time to Attack Iran ( January/
February 2012), Matthew Kroenig takes
a page out of the decade-old playbook
used by advocates of the Iraq war. He
portrays the threat of a nuclear-armed
Iran as both grave and imminent, arguing
that the United States has little choice
but to attack Iran now before it is too
late. Then, after oering the caveat that
attacking Iran is hardly an attractive
prospect, he goes on to portray military
action as preferable to other available
alternatives and concludes that the United
States can manage all the associated risks.
Preventive war, according to Kroenig, is
the least bad option.
But the lesson of Iraq, the last pre-
ventive war launched by the United
States, is that Washington should not
choose war when there are still other
options, and it should not base its decision
to attack on best-case analyses of how it
hopes the confict will turn out. A realistic
assessment of Irans nuclear progress and
how a confict would likely unfold leads
one to a conclusion that is the opposite
of Kroenigs: now is not the time to
attack Iran.
bad ti mi ng
Kroenig argues that there is an urgent
need to attack Irans nuclear infrastructure
soon, since Tehran could produce its
frst nuclear weapon within six months
of deciding to do so. Yet that last phrase
is crucial. The International Atomic Energy
Agency (iaea) has documented Iranian
eorts to achieve the capacity to develop
nuclear weapons at some point, but there
is no hard evidence that Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has yet made
the fnal decision to develop them.
22_Kahl_pp166_173.indd 166 1/17/12 3:30 PM
foreignaffairs
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iaea inspectors, beginning the enrichment
of weapons-grade uranium, or installing
large numbers of advanced centrifuges ,
any one of which would signal that it
had decided to build a bomb. Kroenig is
likely right that these developmentsand
perhaps others, such as the discovery of
new covert enrichment siteswould
create a decision point for the use of force.
But the Iranians have not taken these
steps yet, and as Kroenig acknowledges,
Washington has a very good chance of
detecting them if they do.
ri di ng the escalator
Kroenigs discussion of timing is not the
only misleading part of his article; so is
his contention that the United States
could mitigate the potentially devastating
consequences of a strike on Iran by
carefully managing the escalation that
would ensue. His picture of a clean, cali-
brated confict is a mirage. Any war with
Iran would be a messy and extraordinarily
violent aair, with signifcant casualties
and consequences.
According to Kroenig, Iran would not
respond to a strike with its worst forms
of retaliation, such as closing the Strait of
Hormuz or launching missiles at southern
Europe unless its leaders felt that the
regimes very existence was threatened.
To mitigate this risk, he claims, the United
States could make clear that it is interested
only in destroying Irans nuclear program,
not in overthrowing the government.
But Iranian leaders have staked their
domestic legitimacy on resisting inter-
national pressure to halt the nuclear
program, and so they would inevitably
view an attack on that program as an
attack on the regime itself. Decades of
hostility and perceived U.S. eorts to
In arguing for a six-month horizon,
Kroenig also misleadingly confates
hypothetical timelines to produce weapons-
grade uranium with the time actually
required to construct a bomb. According
to 2010 Senate testimony by James
Cartwright, then vice chairman of the
U.S. Joint Chiefs of Sta, and recent
statements by the former heads of Israels
national intelligence and defense intel-
ligence agencies, even if Iran could produce
enough weapons-grade uranium for a
bomb in six months, it would take it at
least a year to produce a testable nuclear
device and considerably longer to make a
deliverable weapon. And David Albright,
president of the Institute for Science and
International Security (and the source of
Kroenigs six-month estimate), recently
told Agence France-Presse that there is a
low probability that the Iranians would
actually develop a bomb over the next
year even if they had the capability to do
so. Because there is no evidence that Iran
has built additional covert enrichment
plants since the Natanz and Qom sites
were outed in 2002 and 2009, respectively,
any near-term move by Tehran to produce
weapons-grade uranium would have to
rely on its declared facilities. The iaea
would thus detect such activity with
sucient time for the international
community to mount a forceful response.
As a result, the Iranians are unlikely to
commit to building nuclear weapons
until they can do so much more quickly
or out of sight, which could be years o.
Kroenig is also inconsistent about the
timetable for an attack. In some places, he
suggests that strikes should begin now,
whereas in others, he argues that the
United States should attack only if Iran
takes certain actionssuch as expelling
22_Kahl_pp166_173_Blues.indd 167 1/26/12 10:34 AM
Colin H. Kahl
.
Volume 91 No. 2
Iran to launch as many missiles as possible
early in the war. And the decentralized
nature of Irans Islamic Revolutionary
Guard Corps, especially its navy, raises
the prospect of unauthorized responses
that could rapidly expand the fghting in
the crowded waters of the Persian Gulf.
Controlling escalation would be no
easier on the U.S. side. In the face of
reprisals by Iranian proxies, token missile
strikes against U.S. bases and ships, or the
harassment of commercial and U.S. naval
vessels, Kroenig says that Washington
should turn the other cheek and constrain
its own response to Iranian counter-
attacks. But this is much easier said than
done. Just as Irans likely expectation of a
short war might encourage it to respond
disproportionately early in the crisis, so the
United States would also have incentives
to move swiftly to destroy Irans conven-
tional forces and theinfrastructure of
the Revolutionary Guard Corps. And
if the United States failed to do so, proxy
attacks against U.S. civilian personnel in
Lebanon or Iraq, the transfer of lethal
rocket and portable air defense systems
to Taliban fghters in Afghanistan, or
missile strikes against U.S. facilities in
the Gulf could cause signifcant U.S.
casualties, creating irresistible political
pressure in Washington to respond. Add
to this the normal fog of war and the lack
of reliable communications between the
United States and Iran, and Washington
would have a hard time determining
whether Tehrans initial response to a
strike was a one-o event or the prelude
to a wider campaign. If it were the latter,
a passive U.S. approach might motivate
Iran to launch even more dangerous
attacksand this is a risk Washington
may choose not to take. The sum total
undermine the regime would reinforce
this perception. And when combined
with the emphasis on anti-Americanism
in the ideology of the supreme leader and
his hard-line advisers, as well as their
general ignorance about what drives U.S.
decision-making, this perception means
that there is little prospect that Iranian
leaders would believe that a U.S. strike
had limited aims. Assuming the worst
about Washingtons intentions, Tehran
is likely to overreact to even a surgical
strike against its nuclear facilities.
Kroenig nevertheless believes that the
United States could limit the prospects for
escalation by warning Iran that crossing
certain redlines would trigger a devas-
tating U.S. counterresponse. Ironically,
Kroenig believes that a nuclear-armed
Iran would be deeply irrational and prone
to miscalculation yet somehow maintains
that under the same leaders, Iran would
make clear-eyed decisions in the immediate
aftermath of a U.S. strike. But the two
countries share no direct and reliable
channels for communication, and the
inevitable confusion brought on by a
crisis would make signaling dicult and
miscalculation likely.
To make matters worse, in the heat of
battle, Iran would face powerful incentives
to escalate. In the event of a confict,
both sides would come under signifcant
pressure to stop the fghting due to the
impact on international oil markets. Since
this would limit the time the Iranians
would have to reestablish deterrence, they
might choose to launch a quick, all-out
response, without care for redlines. Iranian
fears that the United States could success-
fully disrupt its command-and-control
infrastructure or preemptively destroy its
ballistic missile arsenal could also tempt
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.
immediate aftermath of a U.S. strike on
Irans nuclear program, Iranian leaders
might perceive that holding the strait at
risk would encourage international pressure
on Washington to end the fghting,
possibly deterring U.S. escalation. In
reality, it would more likely have the
opposite eect, encouraging aggressive
U.S. eorts to protect commercial
shipping. The U.S. Navy is capable of
keeping the strait open, but the mere
threat of closure could send oil prices
soaring, dealing a heavy blow to the
fragile global economy. The measures
that Kroenig advocates to mitigate this
threat, such as opening up the U.S.
Strategic Petroleum Reserve and urging
Saudi Arabia to boost oil production,
would be unlikely to suce, especially
since most Saudi crude passes through
the strait.
Ultimately, if the United States and
Iran go to war, there is no doubt that
Washington will win in the narrow
operational sense. Indeed, with the
impressive array of U.S. naval and air
forces already deployed in the Gulf, the
United States could probably knock
Irans military capabilities back 20 years
in a matter of weeks. But a U.S.-Iranian
confict would not be the clinical, tightly
controlled, limited encounter that
Kroenig predicts.
spi llover
Keeping other states in the region out of
the fght would also prove more dicult
than Kroenig suggests. Iran would presume
Israeli complicity in a U.S. raid and would
seek to drag Israel into the confict in
order to undermine potential support
for the U.S. war eort among key Arab
regimes. And although it is true, as Kroenig
of these dynamics would make staying
within Kroenigs proscribed limits
exceedingly dicult.
Even if Iran did not escalate, purely
defensive moves that would threaten
U.S. personnel or international shipping
in the Strait of Hormuzthe maritime
chokepoint through which nearly 20 per-
cent of the worlds traded oil passes
would also create powerful incentives for
Washington to preemptively target Irans
military. Of particular concern would be
Irans anti-access/area-denial capabilities,
which are designed to prevent advanced
navies from operating in the shallow
waters of the Persian Gulf. These systems
integrate coastal air defenses, shore-based
long-range artillery and antiship cruise
missiles, Kilo-class and midget submarines,
remote-controlled boats and unmanned
kamikaze aerial vehicles, and more than
1,000 small attack craft equipped with
machine guns, multiple-launch rockets,
antiship missiles, torpedoes, and rapid-
mine-laying capabilities. The entire
120-mile-long strait sits along the Iranian
coastline, within short reach of these
systems. In the midst of a confict, the
threat to U.S. forces and the global
economy posed by Irans activating its air
defenses, dispersing its missiles or naval
forces, or moving its mines out of storage
would be too great for the United States
to ignore; the logic of preemption would
compel Washington to escalate.
Some analysts, including Afshin
Molavi and Michael Singh, believe that
the Iranians are unlikely to attempt to
close the strait due to the damage it would
infict on their own economy. But Tehrans
saber rattling has already intensifed in
response to the prospect of Western
sanctions on its oil industry. In the
22_Kahl_pp166_173.indd 169 1/17/12 3:30 PM
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.
Volume 91 No. 2
Syria, are signifcantly undermining
Irans infuence. A U.S. strike could
easily shift regional sympathies back in
Tehrans favor by allowing Iran to play
the victim and, through its retaliation,
resuscitate its status as the champion of
the regions anti-Western resistance.
the cost of buyi ng ti me
Even if a U.S. strike went as well as
Kroenig predicts, there is little guaran-
tee that it would produce lasting results.
Senior U.S. defense ocials have repeat-
edly stated that an attack on Irans
nuclear facilities would stall Tehrans
progress for only a few years. Kroenig
argues that such a delay could become
permanent. Those countries whose
nuclear facilities have been attacked
most recently Iraq and Syria, he writes,
have proved unwilling or unable to restart
their programs. In the case of Iraq,
however, Saddam Hussein restarted his
clandestine nuclear weapons program
after the 1981 Israeli attack on the Osirak
nuclear reactor, and it required the Gulf
War and another decade of sanctions and
intrusive inspections to eliminate it. Irans
program is also more advanced and
dispersed than were Iraqs and Syrias,
meaning it would be easier to reconstitute.
A U.S. strike would damage key Iranian
facilities, but it would do nothing to
reverse the nuclear knowledge Iran has
accumulated or its ability to eventually
build new centrifuges.
A U.S. attack would also likely rally
domestic Iranian support around nuclear
hard-liners, increasing the odds that Iran
would emerge from a strike even more
committed to building a bomb. Kroenig
downplays the rally round the fag risks
by noting that hard-liners are already
notes, that Israel remained on the sidelines
during the 199091 Gulf War, the threat
posed by Irans missiles and proxies today
is considerably greater than that posed
by Iraq two decades ago. If Iranian-allied
Hezbollah responded to the fghting by
fring rockets at Israeli cities, Israel could
launch an all-out war against Lebanon.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad might
also try to use the moment to divert
attention from the uprising in his country,
launching his own assault on the Jewish
state. Either scenario, or their combination,
could lead to a wider war in the Levant.
Even in the Gulf, where U.S. partners
are sometimes portrayed as passive, Iranian
retaliation might draw Saudi Arabia and
the United Arab Emirates into the confict.
The Saudis have taken a much more
confrontational posture toward Iran in
the past year, and Riyadh is unlikely to
tolerate Iranian attacks against critical
energy infrastructure. For its part, the
uae, the most hawkish state in the Gulf,
might respond to missiles raining down
on U.S. forces at its Al Dhafra Air Base
by attempting to seize Abu Musa, Greater
Tunb, and Lesser Tunb, three disputed
Gulf islands currently occupied by Iran.
A strike could also set o wider
destabilizing eects. Although Kroenig
is right that some Arab leaders would
privately applaud a U.S. strike, many on
the Arab street would reject it. Both
Islamist extremists and embattled elites
could use this opportunity to transform
the Arab Springs populist antiregime
narrative into a decidedly anti-American
one. This would rebound to Irans advan-
tage just at the moment when political
developments in the region, chief among
them the resurgence of nationalism
in the Arab world and the upheaval in
22_Kahl_pp166_173.indd 170 1/17/12 3:30 PM
[17 1 ]
frmly in power and suggesting that an
attack might produce increased internal
criticism of the regime. But the nuclear
program remains an enormous source of
national pride for the majority of Iranians.
To the extent that there is internal dissent
over the program, it is a discussion about
whether the country should acquire
nuclear weapons or simply pursue civilian
nuclear technology. By demonstrating
the vulnerability of a non-nuclear-armed
Iran, a U.S. attack would provide ammu-
nition to hard-liners who argue for
acquiring a nuclear deterrent. Kroenig
suggests that the United States should
essentially ignore Irans domestic political
tussles when pursuing its vital national
security interest in preventing Tehran
from developing nuclear weapons. But
infuencing Iranian opinion about the
strategic desirability of nuclear weapons
might ultimately oer the only enduring
way of keeping the Islamic Republic on
a peaceful nuclear path.
Finally, if Iran did attempt to restart its
nuclear program after an attack, it would
be much more dicult for the United
States to stop it. An assault would lead
Iran to distance itself from the iaea and
perhaps to pull out of the Nuclear Non-
proliferation Treaty altogether. Without
inspectors on the ground, the international
community would struggle to track or slow
Tehrans eorts to rebuild its program.
contai n yourself
Kroenig argues that a nuclear-armed
Iran would not intentionally launch a
suicidal nuclear war but still concludes
that it is ultimately less risky to attack
the Islamic Republic now than to attempt
to contain it later. He warns that contain-
ment would entail a costly forward
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22_Kahl_pp166_173.indd 171 1/17/12 3:30 PM
Colin H. Kahl
.
Volume 91 No. 2
infrastructure, the United States would
still need to construct an expensive, risky
postwar containment regime to prevent
Iran from reconstituting the program,
much as it did in regard to Iraq after
the Gulf War. The end result would be
strikingly similar to the one that Kroenig
criticizes, requiring Washington to main-
tain sucient air, naval, and ground
forces in the Persian Gulf to attack again
at a moments notice.
A strike carried out in the way Kroenig
advocatesa unilateral preventive attack
would also make postwar containment
more dicult and costly. Many countries
would view such an operation as a breach
of international law, shattering the con-
sensus required to maintain an eective
poststrike containment regime. The
likelihood that the United States could
reduce the political fallout of military
action by building global support for it
in advance, as Kroenig suggests, would
be extremely low absent clear evidence
that Iran is dashing for a bomb. Without
such evidence, Washington would be
left to bear the costs of an attack and the
resulting containment regime alone.
Finally, the surgical nature of Kroenigs
proposed strike, aimed solely at Irans
nuclear program, would make postwar
containment much harder. It would leave
Tehran wounded and aggrieved but still
capable of responding. Kroenigs recom-
mended approach, then, would likely be
just enough to ensure a costly, long-term
confict without actually compelling Iran
to change its behavior.
the opti ons on the table
In making the case for preventive war as
the least bad option, Kroenig dismisses any
prospect of fnding a diplomatic solution
deployment of large numbers of U.S.
forces on Irans periphery for decades.
But the United States already has a
large presence encircling Iran. Forty
thousand U.S. troops are stationed in
the Gulf, accompanied by strike aircraft,
two aircraft carrier strike groups, two
Aegis ballistic missile defense ships,
and multiple Patriot antimissile systems.
On Irans eastern fank, Washington
has another 90,000 troops deployed in
Afghanistan and thousands more support-
ing the Afghan war in nearby Central
Asian states. Kroenig claims that it would
take much more to contain a nuclear-
armed Iran. But U.S. forces in the Gulf
already outnumber those in South Korea
that are there to deter a nuclear-armed
North. It is thus perfectly conceivable that
the existing U.S. presence in the region,
perhaps supplemented by a limited
forward deployment of nuclear weapons
and additional ballistic missile defenses,
would be sucient to deter a nuclear-
armed Iran from aggression and blackmail.
To be sure, such a deterrence-and-
containment strategy would be an extra-
ordinarily complex and risky enterprise,
and there is no doubt that prevention is
preferable. Given the possible conse-
quences of a nuclear-armed Iran, the
price of failure would be very high. But
Kroenigs approach would not solve the
problem. By presenting the options as
either a near-term strike or long-term
containment, Kroenig falls into the same
trap that advocates of the Iraq war fell
into a decade ago: ignoring postwar
scenarios. In reality, the strike that Kroenig
recommends would likely be a prelude
to containment, not a substitute for it.
Since a military raid would not
permanently eliminate Irans nuclear
22_Kahl_pp166_173.indd 172 1/17/12 3:30 PM
foreignaffairs
.
to defend U.S. interests. And as Martin
Dempsey, chairman of the U.S. Joint
Chiefs of Sta, told cnnlate last
December, the United States has a
viable contingency plan for Iran if
force is ultimately required. But given
the high costs and inherent uncer
tainties of a strike, the United States
should not rush to use force until all
other options have been exhausted and
the Iranian threat is not just growing
but imminent. Until then, force is,
and should remain, a last resort, not a
frst choice.
to the U.S.Iranian stando. He concludes
that the Obama administrations dual
track policy of engagement and pressure
has failed to arrest Irans march toward a
bomb, leaving Washington with no other
choice but to bomb Iran.
But this ignores the severe economic
strain, isolation, and technical challenges
that Iran is experiencing. After years
of dismissing the economic eects of
sanctions, senior Iranian ocials now
publicly complain about the intense pain
the sanctions are producing. And facing the
prospect of U.S. sanctions against Irans
central bank and European actions to
halt Iranian oil imports, Tehran signaled
in early January some willingness to return
to the negotiating table. Washington must
test this willingness and, in so doing,
provide Iran with a clear strategic choice:
address the concerns of the international
community regarding its nuclear program
and see its isolation lifted or stay on its
current path and face substantially higher
costs. In framing this choice, Washington
must be able to assert that likeminded
states are prepared to implement oilrelated
sanctions, and the Obama administration
should continue to emphasize that all
options, including military action, remain
on the table.
Some will undoubtedly claim that
highlighting the potential risks associated
with war will lead the Iranians to conclude
that the United States lacks the resolve
to use force. But in authorizing the surge
in Afghanistan, carrying out the raid
that killed Osama bin Laden, and leading
the nato air campaign to oust Libyas
Muammar alQaddaf, President Barack
Obama has repeatedly shown that he is
willing to accept risk and use forceboth
as part of a coalition and unilaterally
22_Kahl_pp166_173_Blues.indd 173 1/26/12 10:35 AM
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on International Relations
[174]
Political and Legal
g. j ohn i kenberry
Humanitys Law. by ruti g. teitel.
Oxford University Press, 2011,
320 pp. $35.00.
The human rights revolution of the last
half century has begun to redefne the
worlds understanding of the relationships
among individuals, the state, and violence.
This masterful treatise by Teitel, a law
professor at New York University, oers
one of the best explanations yet of the
complex, shifting normative foundations
of international law. Whereas the old
international legal order emphasized state
security, defned by borders, statehood,
and territory, the emerging focus is on
human security: the protection of persons
and peoples. The result is what Teitel calls
humanitys law, a new discourse on
violence and world politics that brings
together and crystallizes a multitude of
small but important shifts in international
human rights law, the law of war, and
international criminal justice. She chroni-
cles the way these ideas have changed as
courts, tribunals, advocacy groups, and
international organizations have interpreted
and extended the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights, the Geneva Conventions,
and other enshrinements of principles
about rights and responsibilities relating to
war and justice. This book is an indis-
pensable guide to understanding these
intellectual transformations and their
complicated implications for policymakers
and the international community.
Uniting States: Voluntary Union in World
Politics. by joseph m. parent.
Oxford University Press, 2011, 256 pp.
$99.00 (paper, $27.95).
Scholars do not have good explanations
for what causes states to voluntarily form
political unionsa rare but important
phenomenon. The United States did so
in 1789, and todays European Union
has come close. Realists expect states to
tenaciously hold on to their sovereignty
and are puzzled that states would ever
try to unify. Liberals believe states are
driven by the search for economic gains
and democratic solidarity and are puzzled
that political unions are so uncommon.
In this provocative but carefully argued
study, Parent makes the case that states
create political unions only when they are
imperiled by security threats. Unifcation
is actually a type of extreme alliance, in
which states of roughly equal power bind
together for mutual protection. Parent
fnds only two instances of successful
23_RecentBooks_pp174_196.indd 174 1/17/12 3:35 PM
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.
political unifcationthe United States
and Switzerlandwhich he contrasts with
the failed eorts of Sweden and Norway
and with Simn Bolvars attempt to unite
South America. The book succeeds in
building a realist explanation of unifca-
tion. But with so few cases of voluntary
political union, it is not clear whether
Parents theory is all that illuminating.
Still, the book does generate a clear
prediction in regard to Europe: without
an intense, enduring, and widely shared
threat, the core European states will fail
to merge into a true union.
Governance Without a State? Policies and
Politics in Areas of Limited Statehood.
edited by thomas risse. Columbia
University Press, 2011, 312 pp. $50.00.
Sovereign nation-states that can uphold
the rule of law, enforce order at home,
and abide by international rules and
institutions are frequently touted as
the building blocks of eective global
governance. If fragile and failed states
are the problem, nation-state building
is the solution. But this important study
led by Risse, a German political scien-
tist, demonstrates that many parts of
the world will not soon or easily be
transformed into capable modern states.
Starting with the assumption that lim-
ited sovereignty is here to stay, at least
in many developing and postcolonial
societies, the authors explore ways in
which the international community
can help such places develop eective
and legitimate governance. Several
authors explore the various ways in
which multilevel governance has
been organized, ranging from colonial
administration to modern protector-
ates, such as Afghanistan, Bosnia and
Herzegovina, and Kosovo. For readers
who think the world is steadily moving
toward the Westphalian ideal of a uni-
versal system of sovereign states, this
book will be a revelation. For readers
who despair at the chronic problem
of weak and failing states, this book
contains intriguing ideas about alternative
forms of stable governance.
Taking Liberties: The War on Terror and
the Erosion of American Democracy. by
susan n. herman. Oxford University
Press, 2011, 296 pp. $24.95.
Power and Constraint: The Accountable
Presidency After 9/11. by jack gold-
smith. Norton, 2012, 336 pp. $26.95.
The unwinding of the Iraq war and
the killing of Osama bin Laden have
marked a symbolic end to the post-
9/11 war on terror. What has not
ended is the public debate over how
the United States and other democracies
can best square their commitment to
civil liberties and the rule of law with
protection against terrorism. Herman,
the president of the American Civil
Liberties Union, passionately calls for
a rethinking of the costs and benefts
of the emergency presidential powers
that were put in place after the 2001
terrorist attacks. She notes that Con-
gress passed the Patriot Act with little
or no meaningful deliberation. And to
the surprise of some, the surveillance
programs that the Obama administration
has justifed and pursued are not sub-
stantially dierent from those of its
predecessor. Much of the book is a
catalog of episodes in which Americans
have been blacklisted, watch listed, . . .
spied on, and gagged. Post-9/11 mea-
sures relating to the material support
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Volume 91 No. 2
of terrorism have infringed on First
Amendment rights. New surveillance
techniques have threatened the privacy
rights protected by the Fourth Amend-
ment. Herman believes that although
it might be understandable that fear and
uncertainty led authorities to privilege
security over liberty, they overreacted
in the wake of the attacks. In defend-
ing the United States, the government
must also defend the Constitution.
Goldsmith, a Harvard law professor,
was on the frontlines of the legal debates
after 9/11, working in the Defense and
Justice Departments during the frst
term of the Bush administration. He
acknowledges that the war on terror
shifted power to the presidency. But
he argues that this is only half the story.
Less known but no less remarkable is
a revolution in wartime presidential
accountability that has simultaneously
checked and legitimated the expansion
of executive powers. Congress, often
spurred on by media attention, has
played a role in altering and regulating
presidential policies relating to interro-
gation, detention, and surveillance.
Federal judges have proved willing to
review the legal authority of presidential
military decisions. Outside government,
Goldsmith argues, the traditional system
of checks and balances has been supported
by an expanding network of lawyers,
investigators, auditors, bloggers, and
public interest groups that have rendered
executive decisions more transparent.
In Goldsmiths optimistic vision, it is this
complex and messy system of account-
ability that reconciles a powerful presidency
with a strong constitution.
Economic, Social, and
Environmental
richard n. cooper
Boomerang: Travels in the New Third
World. by michael lewis. Norton,
2011, 224 pp. $25.95.
Lewis, the bestselling author of Liars
Poker and The Big Short, has written a
breezy, bottom-up account of the ongoing
fnancial crises in Iceland, Ireland, Greece,
and two cities in debt-ridden California:
fnancially strapped San Jose and bank-
rupt Vallejo. The book is fun to read but
also scary. Through his reporting and
interviews, Lewis relates many amusing
anecdotes about the roles of particular
individuals and institutions and illuminates
the social attitudes behind the naivet and
lack of discipline that laid the bases for the
crises. Dierent cultures produced distinct
responses to fnancial adversity: Irish
acceptance and passivity, Greek anger and
hostility, and an Icelandic decision to elect
female politicians who were less macho
and more sensible than the men who had
damaged the countrys economy. Califor-
nians, Lewis reports, have not yet recon-
ciled their desire for public spending with
their aversion to taxes. He also explores how
traditionally staid German banks came to
lend so much to overborrowers, such as the
Greeks, not only producing large losses but
also rendering themselves vulnerable to
future crises. The irony is that the German
government now must decide how much
fnancial assistance to give other members
of the eurozone to help save Europe from
a borrowing binge fnanced by those very
German banks.
Recent Books
foreign affairs
.
Global Trade in Services: Fear, Facts, and
Offshoring. by j. bradford jensen.
Peterson Institute for International
Economics, 2011, 256 pp. $25.95.
The United States now produces all its
material outputfood, minerals, manu-
factured goods, constructionwith less
than 20 percent of its labor force. Yet
agriculture and manufacturing still
receive disproportionate political attention.
Jensen turns the spotlight on the more
than 80 percent of U.S. workers employed
in services, a diverse category that includes
legal, accounting, architectural, educa-
tional, and medical services, as well as
transportation and retail. He argues that
many services are becoming increasingly
tradable, meaning that some service
jobs might move overseas. But tradable
services typically require high levels of
education and skill, so increased interna-
tional trade in services should favor the
American work force, which is relatively
well educated and skilled. Jensen con-
cludes that U.S. policy should aim to
further liberalize trade in services to
help American workers take advantage
of the vast increase in infrastructure
expenditures likely to occur in developing
countries in the coming decades, which
will create jobs that require advanced
design and engineering skills. He also
urges more attention to education at all
ages to maintain American workers high
level of skills.
Plundered Nations? Successes and Failures in
Natural Resource Extraction. edited
by paul collier and anthony j.
venables. Palgrave Macmillan, 2011,
376 pp. $32.00.
In the 1980s and 1990s, a number of
economists put forward the notion of a
resource curse. According to this idea,
a country rich in natural resources was
condemned, at best, to lack development in
tradable nonresource goods (due to having
a too strong currency) and to possibly
become a nonproductive rent-seeking
society. At worse, the curse would lead
to endemic corruption or even violent
conict over control of the dominant
resource. Of the eight countries this book
examines, only twoChile (copper) and
Malaysia (rubber, then oil)have managed
to convert their resource bases success-
fully into more diversifed economies
with sustainably rising standards of living.
The only clear failure is Cameroon (oil),
where the well-being of its citizens fell
following the resource boom. The others
Iran, Kazakhstan, Nigeria (all oil), Russia
(mainly oil and gas), and Zambia
(copper)have experienced mixed results.
The editors provide an excellent analytic
overview and suggest guidelines more
likely to assure success, such as the creation
and maintenance of overseas funds into
which some of the proceeds from the
exhaustible resource could be channeled.
But the book also emphasizes the fact
that there is no single way to manage
resources and that for a country to be
successful, its resource policies must take
into account its particular circumstances.
Arctic Security in an Age of Climate Change.
edited by james kraska. Cambridge
The Arctic has long been a place where
only the most intrepid ventured. That is
changing, slowly. Because global warming
aects high latitudes more than low ones,
melting sea ice (and improved technology)
will increase access to the Arctic, both for
transportation and for the exploitation of
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Volume 91 No. 2
natural resources, which many experts
believe are abundant in the region. Sea-
travel distance from western Europe to
Japan, the Korean Peninsula, and north-
east China could be cut nearly in half if
ships traveled through the Arctic Ocean
north of Russia instead of via the Suez
Canal and the Indian Ocean. In 2009, two
German cargo ships traveled the Arctic
route without relying on icebreaking
escort vessels, which Russian ships nor-
mally use. This collection surveys the
evolving possibilities of increased Arctic
access and its implications for the fve
Arctic states: Canada, Denmark (which
borders the Arctic by way of Greenland),
Norway, Russia, and the United States. It
is a useful introduction to a remote part
of the world that will undoubtedly become
more important in the coming years.
DDT and the American Century: Global
Health, Environmental Politics, and the
Pesticide That Changed the World. by
david kinkela. University of North
Carolina Press, 2011, 272 pp. $39.95.
When it was frst used on a wide scale,
in the 1940s, ddt (dichlorodiphenyltri-
chloroethane) was known as the miracle
pesticide. It was cheap, easy to apply,
persistent, lethal to insects, and apparently
harmless to humans. It played an important
role in modernizing Mexican agriculture
and in the World Health Organizations
campaign against malaria in Asia and
Latin America in the 1950s. But in the
early 1960s, the biologist Rachel Carson
and others revealed that ddt accumulated
harmfully in birds and fsh and could
in fact pose risks to human health. The
United States banned the domestic use
of ddt in 1972, but it is still used in a
number of poor countries. Kinkela
emphasizes ddts part in the larger Cold
War project of using American technology
to improve the lives of poor people around
the world, including the role of fertilizers
and pesticides in making possible the
green revolution. He presents ddt as
a useful product with undesirable long-
term ecological eects, requiring careful
judgment about when to use it. The U.S.
chemical industry, in contrast, comes o
badly, as it attempted to deny and dismiss
ddts negative eects and to discredit
anyone who pointed them out.
Military, Scientic, and
Technological
lawrence d. freedman
With Our Backs to the Wall: Victory and
Defeat in 1918. by david stevenson.
Belknap Press, 2011, 752 pp. $35.00.
The Beauty and the Sorrow: An Intimate
History of the First World War. by peter
englund. translated by peter
graves. Knopf, 2011, 560 pp. $35.00.
The suddenness with which World War I
ended had lasting eects, not least the
belief, later exploited by Adolf Hitler,
that the only explanation for Germanys
defeat was a stab in the back. Rather
than the deadly stalemates of the trenches,
which still dominate popular views of
the war, 1918 saw fast-moving oensives.
The Germans went frst. With Russia
out of the war, extra German divisions
were available. But they had little time
and were anxious to strike before the
Americans applied the full weight of
their power. Germanys spring oensive
made rapid gains, pushing the Allies
Recent Books
foreign affairs
.
back, leading to British Field Marshal
Douglas Haigs famous order to his troops
to continue fghting with our backs to
the wall, from which Stevenson draws
his title. But Germany and its army were
exhausted. The oensive petered out,
and the Germans were soon in retreat.
Stevensons book is a masterful, lucid
analysis that does not simply tell the tale.
It also considers in detail the factors of
technology, morale, supply, economics,
and politics that contributed to Germanys
defeat. The tactics of the Allies were more
imaginative, the blockade they imposed
made life miserable for their enemies, and
their leaders were more astute and atten-
tive to the need for stability at home.
In a completely dierent book about
the same war, Englund oers no compre-
hensive overview but instead reconstructs
the conict through the stories of a diverse
cast of 20 people who lived through it.
The book is an intimate history because
Englund not only uses his subjects own
words but also provides his own, some-
times sardonic commentary, supplying the
background the reader needs to understand
the characters situations and preoccu-
pations. The cast includes a French civil
servant who never heard a shot fred but
wrote wry reections on how a denial
of the reality of war sustained morale in
Paris. Another subject is a German seaman
posted on a battleship that never saw
combat; his only action came at the wars
end, when he participated in a mutiny.
Others are engaged in the war far from
their own countries: a Venezuelan cavalry-
man in the Ottoman army, a Canadian
married to a Polish aristocrat, a British
nurse in a Russian military hospital.
Like no other, this book brings out in a
poignant and eective way the meaning
of World War I for those who lived
through it, and allows them to speak
to us almost a century later.
Leningrad: The Epic Siege of World War II,
19411944. by anna reid. Walker
and Company, 2011, 512 pp. $37.50.
The Battle of the Tanks: Kursk, 1943. by
lloyd clark. Atlantic Monthly
Press, 2011, 496 pp. $30.00.
Compared with southern and western
Europes experience of World War II,
the course of the war in the East has been
far less thoroughly researched. But the
East is now catching up. The end of
the Cold War gave researchers access
to Soviet archives and survivors and has
made it possible to consider this epic
struggle free from the ideological distor-
tions of the communist years and also
to describe some of the human stories
behind the staggering statistics, as these
two books do. Reid begins on the frst day
of the 1941 German siege of Leningrad
(now Saint Petersburg), in which some
750,000 people died as Hitler sought to
starve the population out of existence.
During the frst winter, in particular, the
search for nutrition became desperate,
descending even into cannibalism, which
Reid describes in grisly detail. Meanwhile,
the Communist Party and the secret
police continued to manage the city in
the spirit of prewar purges and propa-
ganda, ready to blame defeatists and
traitors for the peoples privations and
never their own incompetence. Quoting
from diaries, memoirs, and interviews,
Reid brilliantly explodes Soviet-era myths
and constructs a harrowing, unrelenting
account that demonstrates how extreme
human behavior can become in a struggle
for survival.
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Clark describes the Battle of Kursk
of July 1943, the last great German
Wehrmacht oensive, which was an
attempt to recover from the defeat at
Stalingrad, fve months earlier. The scale
was enormous: four million men, 13,000
tanks, and 12,000 aircraft. The Soviets
took heavier loses, but the Germans
could not complete a decisive break-
through and thereafter found themselves
on the defensive. Clark puts the battle in
context, explaining how Hitlers strategic
misjudgments frustrated even his most
loyal generals, who coped with the
consequences as best they could, often
with great tactical skill. Like Reid, Clark
makes excellent use of frsthand accounts.
Many of those who fought tell of an
expectation of imminent death, as tanks
fred into one another at close distance.
It wasnt a battle, reports a Soviet
t-34 tank commander. It was a slaughter-
house of tanks.
The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms
Trade. by andrew feinstein.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011,
704 pp. $30.00.
Until 2001, Feinstein was a member of
South Africas parliament for the African
National Congress. He resigned in disgust
at the bribes paid by arms manufacturers
to senior party fgures as the country
modernized its military. Arms acquisition
by governments is a reliable recipe for
corruption: massive contracts for equip-
ment that might never be used, all
surrounded by the secretive, protective
aura of national security. Merchants of
death have long been blamed for feeding
war frenzies and profting from misery.
But in Feinsteins telling, the entire trade is
a conspiracy between greedy businesses
and kleptocratic elites, counterproductive
for the selling nations (because the weap-
ons often fall into the wrong hands) and
for the buyers (because arms contracts
use up scarce funds without doing much
for security). One might argue that there
are genuine defense needs that cannot
be met any other way and that the trade
is not always as distorted as Feinstein
contends. But the book is not trying
to be balanced, and Feinstein makes his
case with an impressive amount of detailed
research and a gift for narrative that
makes his fndings hard to dismiss.
The United States
walter russell mead
Warfare State: World War II Americans and
the Age of Big Government. by james t.
sparrow. Oxford University Press,
2011, 344 pp. $34.95.
Warfare State is one of the most impor-
tant books on the United States to be
published in some time. Sparrow is not
the frst scholar to argue that it was
World War II, rather than the New Deal,
that shaped the postwar consensus in
support of a stronger, more active federal
government. But this clearly written,
concise, and yet comprehensive book
makes the argument more forcefully and
fully than others. The generation that
fought World War IIor that worked
for victory on the home frontlived
under a more powerful and more intrusive
federal government than any Americans
before or since. With enormous force, the
war imprinted on the greatest generation
the importance of the subordination of
individual interests to group well-being,
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March / April 2012 [1 81 ]
of coordinating individual and corporate
action under national authority, and of a
common national purpose that overrode
antagonisms of class and, to an extent,
race. As members of that generation fade,
so do the assumptions and habitsgood
and badthey acquired in the war.
The multifaceted consequences of this
passing include everything from the rise
of the Tea Party to the corrosion of ethics
on Wall Street. Warfare State is a book that
historians and students of contemporary
American politics need to master; this is
scholarship at its best.
No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in
Washington. by condoleezza rice.
Crown, 2011, 784 pp. $35.00.
The shadow of Dean Acheson looms
large in Rices memoir of eight years of
service in the George W. Bush adminis-
tration, frst as national security adviser
and then as secretary of state. In both
form and substance, Achesons memoir
of the Truman administration, Present at
the Creation, serves as a model for Rices.
Both Acheson and Rice served as secre-
tary of state in administrations that were
criticized for going to war as a result of
policy errors (in Korea for Truman and
in Iraq for Bush), and both turned the
White House over to the opposing party
after failures and diculties abroad and
at home. Achesons skillful memoir helped
revise the historical verdict; today, the
errors and misjudgments of the Truman
years are largely forgotten, and such
achievements as the Marshall Plan and
the establishment of nato dominate the
historical memory. The Bush adminis-
tration is unlikely to achieve so full a
rehabilitation. Nevertheless, Rices rigor-
ous and fair-minded accounting will
likely help soften the historical verdict.
Rice was one of the few principals of the
Bush administration whose reputation
stood higher in 2008 than in 2000; the
crisp professionalism, love of country, and
ability to see clearly and speak candidly on
display in this memoir help explain why.

The Unquiet American: Richard Holbrooke
in the World. edited by derek
chollet and samantha power.
PublicAairs, 2011, 400 pp. $29.99.
After leaving the Clinton administration,
Richard Holbrooke maintained an oce
at the Council on Foreign Relations, where
he kept a picture of himself and the Serbian
strongman Slobodan Milosevic on the
mantelpiece. The two men were smiling;
the caption read, We had a frank and
cordial conversation and then I bombed
him. Holbrookes untimely death in 2010
deprived the country of one of its fnest,
most inspiring, and at times most infuri-
ating diplomats and public servants. It also
motivated a group of his former colleagues,
associates, and employees to write a
spectacular series of essays retracing his life
and career through the eyes of those who
knew him best. Powers essay alone is
worth the price of the book; reecting on
her mentor, Power is aectionate, exasper-
ated, and eloquent, catching Holbrooke at
his most intense, most personal, and most
eective. One of Holbrookes youngest
protgs, E. Benjamin Skinner, writes
about Holbrookes experiences in college
journalism and as an intern at The New
York Times and also considers the ways
Holbrooke quietly integrated humanitarian
concerns into his diplomatic missions.
Aided by Holbrookes widow, Kati Marton,
Chollet and Power have pulled together
a collection of writings that reminds
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those who knew Holbrooke what they
have lost and allows others to learn some-
thing about one of the great men of
our time.
Steve Jobs. by walter isaacson. Simon
& Schuster, 2011, 656 pp. $35.00.
Isaacsons magnifcent, gripping biography
of the Apple founder Steve Jobs is more
than the life of the business visionary who
created the worlds most valuable com-
pany and changed the lives of millions of
people. It is also a demonstration of the
continuing vitality of American culture.
Jobsa vegan, antiestablishment, lsd-
taking college dropoutultimately
created a series of products that helped
reshape American industry. Like many
great entrepreneurs, Jobs had a personality
and views that were quirky, eccentric, and
sometimes o-putting. But American
society proved exible and hungry enough
to enable Jobs and his insurgent band
of obsessives and dreamers to fnd the
fnancing and make the deals needed to
put Macs, iPods, iPhones, and iPads into
the hands of eager customers all over the
world. The ability of Isaacson to write
books that capture an age as well as a
man makes him one of our best and
most important biographers. Steve Jobs
shows Isaacson at his best.
Foundations of the American Century: The
Ford, Carnegie, and Rockefeller Founda-
tions and the Rise of American Power.
by inderjeet parmar. Columbia
Parmars awed but important study of
the role of foundations in American
foreign policy during the last 70 years
brings needed attention to a subject that
has not received nearly enough scrutiny.
Parmars most valuable insight is that
although foundations have often failed
in their stated objectives of promoting
democracy and reducing poverty in
developing countries, they have suc-
ceeded in creating networks of scholars
and activists who have helped recast
global intellectual life in the pragmatic
American mold. These networks, along
with the globalization of the American
university and nongovernmental organi-
zation models, are among the most
striking and important aspects of the
postWorld War II world, and Parmar
does well to highlight their rise. But
his book is too polemic to provide a full
account of the phenomena it investi-
gates; worse, Parmar seems to think
that Americans could have easily reduced
poverty and made the world a utopia
had they only been less interested in
their nefarious networking agenda. Still,
students of this important topic will
appreciate this pioneering work.
Western Europe
andrew moravcsi k
Thinking the Twentieth Century. by tony
judt with timothy snyder.
Penguin Press, 2012, 432 pp. $36.00.
The late Judt was among the Wests
leading public intellectuals and among
the greatest intellectual historians of the
West. His gift was to meld the two: his
history captured the excitement of past
intellectual debates, and his commentary
was infused with the perspective of a
master historian. The magnum opus he
never wrote would have been a grand
intellectual history placing in historical
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context the modern ideologies he studied
socialism, nationalism, conservatism,
liberalism, Marxism, Zionism, European
federalism, religious fundamentalism
and maintaining their relevance for future
generations. The closest he came are the
series of testimonial conversations con-
tained in this book, conducted with the
Yale historian Snyder during the fnal
months of Judts battle with Lou Gehrigs
disease. The book highlights his status as
a perpetual insider-outsider in France,
the United Kingdom, and the United
States, which seems to have aorded him
a keen appreciation of the peculiar cultural
and historical circumstances of each.
Yet most moving for the reader are
Judts ferce commitment to history as
an indispensable key to understanding
the present and his ability, even when
speaking his fnal thoughts through a
breathing tube, to express himself in clear,
forthright language. Despite a sometimes
meandering conversational form, the result
is a volume flled with memorable insights
that any educated person will enjoy.
The French Way: How France Embraced
and Rejected American Values and Power.
by richard f. kuisel. Princeton
This book captures Frances deep am-
bivalence toward American economics,
politics, and culture. After a scholarly
lifetime explaining French attitudes
toward liberal values, free markets, and
foreigners, the political scientist Kuisel
is uniquely suited to the task. Many
French fnd the Unites States inequality,
materialism, populism, and global milita-
rism deeply distasteful. Like so many
things French, this response remains
paradoxical: Americanization and anti-
Americanization coexist together. The
French irt with transatlantic fashions
and ideas, from free-market economics
to California Cabernet. Some of it sticks,
as Euro Disney, 1,000 McDonalds, and
many successful American tv shows attest.
The French are more willing to use military
force, support high technology, and oppose
both communist and Islamist extremism
than most other Europeans. Yet in the
end, the French remain frmly wedded
to views of democracy, family, work,
and lifestyle that diverge from those
of Americans, and there is little sign of
change. These views are particularly
pronounced on the left, but even French
business is ambivalent about the United
States, seeking more freedom from
regulation but remaining suspicious
of moving toward what is perceived as
an underregulated U.S. model. Kuisel
unpacks all this, making this book
required reading for anyone interested
in relations between the worlds two
oldest republics.
After the Fall: The End of the European
Dream and the Decline of a Continent.
by walter laqueur. Thomas
Dunne, 2012, 336 pp. $26.99.
Laqueur is a commentator about whom
it is hard not to feel ambivalent. On the
plus side, as a widely published scholar
of twentieth-century history, now retired
from Georgetown and Londons Institute
of Contemporary History, he brings
formidable intelligence and historical
erudition to the task of putting Europes
current predicament into perspective. In
contrast to commonplace conservative
critics of Europe, Laqueur, when he
cites Brooks Adams or Raymond Aron,
Prince Klemens von Metternich or Jean
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Monnet, sounds as though he knows
what he is talking about. On the negative
side, this book repeats a set of one-sided
criticisms about continental Europe
typical of the Anglo-American right: it
is militarily weak, demographically feeble,
economically incompetent, fxated on
human rights, overly critical of the United
States, morally relativisticand, above
all, too Muslim. Laqueur searches in vain
for the causes of these alleged problems,
obsessing about demographics and non-
Christian immigration even while
admitting they are not the primary
factors. When Laqueur advances such
arguments, the subtlety and factual
basis so evident in his more general
analysis desert him. Still, this jeremiad
will surely be discussed widely.
Reagan and Thatcher: The Diffcult
Relationship. by richard aldous.
Norton, 2012, 352 pp. $27.95.
Great historical fgures generate their own
myths, often deliberately. One task of
the historian is to recapture, as much as
possible, things as they actually were. Few
modern politicians have generated more
fctions thanand few so deliberately
asthe American and British conservative
revolutionaries of the 1980s, Ronald
Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. According
to their overlapping myths, they were
idealists who stood together for freedom,
robust militaries, and a frm hand against
terrorism. Yet looking back, the truth
seems more complex and subtle. Thatchers
inimitable Churchillian persona was the
result of careful coaching by political
professionals, and Reagan was far more
pragmatic than most who invoke his
name would have one believe. Aldous
startling conclusion is that Reagan and
Thatcher clashed repeatedly over issues
such as the Falklands, Grenada, sanctions
against the Soviets, the Strategic Defense
Initiative, nuclear arms control and
missile policy, the Middle East (especially
Lebanon and Libya), and the Wests
relationship with Mikhail Gorbachev
all the while crafting an image of conser-
vative unity for the media. In reality, the
Anglo-American relationship during
the 1980s was weaker in many ways than
U.S. relations with France or Germany.
This brilliant book reminds readers of
the simple lesson that in diplomacy,
interests often trump ideologyand
spin trumps both.
Western Hemisphere
richard fei nberg
The Southern Tiger: Chiles Fight for a
Democratic and Prosperous Future. by
ricardo lagos with blake
hounshell and elizabeth
dickinson. Palgrave Macmillan,
2012, 272 pp. $28.00.
Forget the misleading title: this engross-
ing political memoir tells the inspiring
story of how during the 1980s, a deter-
mined political opposition managed to
outmaneuver an entrenched military
dictatorship and restore democracy to
Chile. As a tenacious leader of that
opposition, Lagos built a strategy that
eschewed violence, forged unity among
quarreling factions, and lent courage
to a fear-stricken populationtimeless
lessons for pro-democracy movements
fghting authoritarian regimes every-
where. As minister of education and
minister of public works, and later as
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president, from 2000 to 2006, Lagos
improved social services for the poor
while the lifelong socialist also discovered
the virtues of free-trade agreements
and public-private partnerships. Still,
the right remains powerful in Chile, and
a conservative businessman was elected
president in 2010. Lagos applauds the
student protesters now demanding
better access to quality education as
the children of Chiles democracy.
As president of a small, remote country,
Lagos advocated a rules-based world
order to protect weaker states living in
the shadows of more powerful neighbors.
Overall, Lagos emerges as a judicious and
compassionate leader, a worthy torchbearer
for the best of Chiles political traditions.
International Mediation in Venezuela. by
jennifer mccoy and francisco
diez. U.S. Institute of Peace, 2011,
320 pp. $24.95.
Between 2002 and 2004, a period of dan-
gerous political polarization in Venezuela,
McCoy and Diez were members of a team
from the Carter Center that negotiated
between President Hugo Chvez and the
Venezuelan opposition. The international
mediation successfully channeled political
energies away from potential violence and
toward peaceful constitutional voting,
although tensions remained after Chvez
defeated a recall referendum and rearmed
his executive powers in 2004. The book is
smartly analytic, full of valuable lessons
learned, and often self-critical; it is also
a spirited defense of the Carter Centers
role in the stando. Former U.S. President
Jimmy Carter is lauded for his personal
capacity to build trust with all parties,
including Chvez. In contrast, the then
secretary-general of the Organization of
American States, Csar Gaviria, is
portrayed as inexible and distant. To
justify the Carter Centers endorsement
of the recall vote, the authors detail the
postelection scrutiny of the balloting
procedures. They concede that as media-
tors, they should not have taken on
the additional, delicate task of election
monitoring. But their generally favorable
commentary on Chvezs leadership and
social-transformation agenda and their
repeated criticisms of his opponents will
confrm in some minds the oft-alleged
pro-Chvez tilt of the centers mission.
Guantnamo: An American History.
by jonathan m. hansen. Hill
and Wang, 2011, 448 pp. $35.00.
With a broad, ambitious sweep, Hansen
takes the reader through Cuban history
from the Spanish conquest to the present
day, highlighting the role of Guantnamo
Bay, a large natural harbor on the islands
eastern tip, where the United States has
maintained a naval base since 1903. Much
of the book retreads well-worn ground on
Cuban history and U.S.-Cuban relations.
Hansen seeks to elevate the strategic
and symbolic importance of the bay,
but the evidence often undermines him.
As Hansen concedes, the bays remote
location reduced the U.S. Navys inuence
in political intrigues, compared with the
role played by the American embassy
in Havana, and during the Castro era,
both the Cuban government and the
U.S. military have cautiously avoided
embroiling Gitmo in otherwise tense
bilateral relations. Expounding at length,
Hansen bitterly denounces the opportu-
nistic use of the facility to hold Haitian
migrants and, after 9/11, suspected terror-
ists. The books analysis of U.S. policies
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toward Cuba is fltered through Hansens
reductive view of the United States as a
nation expansionist to its materialistic,
racist core, where narrow self-interest
regularly trumps professed idealism. But
Hansen collects interesting anecdotes that,
if separated from the books ideological
ris, would make for a colorful monograph.
Latin America and the Caribbeans Long-
Term Growth: Made in China? by the
office of the chief economist
for latin america and the
caribbean region. World Bank,
2011, 68 pp. Free online.
Financial Development in Latin America
and the Caribbean: The Road Ahead. by
augusto de la torre, alain ize,
and sergio l. schmukler. World
Bank, 2011, 274 pp. Free online.
Most Latin American economies have
done quite well during the last ten years or
so, enjoying relatively high growth rates,
low ination, and measurable poverty
reduction. But is this success sustainable
in a volatile global economy? And can
Latin American countries accelerate their
growth to East Asian levels? Those are the
key questions tackled in these two compli-
mentary, timely World Bank publications.
Latin America and the Caribbeans Long-
Term Growth is unequivocal in its
judgment: surging trade and investment
ows from China will not be enough
to lift Latin America onto a sustainable
high-growth path. The World Bank
economists who authored the report fnd
little evidence that the China connection is
fostering signifcantly higher productivity
the key to higher output and, hence, to
better living standards. China can deliver
a positive external shock, but only if Latin
America progresses more rapidly with
fundamental internal reforms: increased
domestic savings, better education, more
robust infrastructure, lower costs of
doing business, and enhanced innovation
capacity. The report does uncover some
heartening news: growing evidence of
technological modernization in agricul-
ture in some countries and proftable
improvements in the processes used to
transform raw materials into metals.
Financial instability has long been
the Achilles heel of Latin American
economies. But as Financial Development
in Latin America and the Caribbean docu-
ments, regulatory regimes have been
strengthened, local stock and bond markets
have expanded (with some seeking
greater safety through regional market
integration), and institutions that lend to
small businesses and micro-enterprises
have also blossomed, creating more
equitable capital markets. In contrast to
the frightening chaos of the fnancial
markets in developed economies, Latin
American fnancial systems have so far
remained strong and stable. But the authors
caution that the region still has a long
way to go in building fnancial systems
that can protect consumer rights and
provide adequate long-term credit to
worthy enterprises. Stronger systemic
supervision will require much better
coordination among regulatory agencies
and a signifcant improvement in the
quality of supervisory personnel.
Reaching Out: Cubas New Economy and the
International Response. by richard e.
feinberg. Brookings Institution,
2011, 102 pp. Free online.
Cuba has turned. It is recharting its
future. Feinbergs lucid, succinct report
describes the Cuban economys self-
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defeating distortions and President Ral
Castros economic reforms, which are
vague and short on specifcs but authorize
a market economy that many other Cuban
leaders still distrust. Last April, the Cuban
Communist Party adopted the reforms,
and their signifcance and reach have since
become clear, as new markets for real estate
and cars have emerged. Feinberg analyzes
Cubas receptiveness to assistance from
Canada and Europe and its emerging-
market strategy of making economic
deals with Brazil, China, Russia, and
Venezuela. He also provides apt compari-
sons between Cuba and two developing
countries, Nicaragua and Vietnam, that
have engaged with the world market and
the United States while still retaining a
marked measure of independence. In a
thought-provoking chapter, he argues that
international fnancial institutions should
engage with Cuba, as should the U.S.
government, thereby nudging history
forward in Cuba. Ultimately, though,
only Cubans can make their own history,
even if they cannot make it just as they
pleaseas Karl Marx would have told
those Cubans who still claim to rule
according to his vision.
jorge i. domnguez
Eastern Europe
and Former
Soviet Republics
robert legvold
Belarus: The Last European Dictatorship.
by andrew wilson. Yale University
Press, 2011, 256 pp. $35.00.
Belarus sits like a large ellipsis at the center
of Europe, an authoritarian puzzle to
much of the outside world, worrying to
its immediate neighbors, and a vexatious
ally to Russia. But is it, Wilson asks,
even a proper country? To answer that
question, he takes the reader through a
compressed mass of history, from the
tenth-century principality of Polatsk,
through the Polish-Lithuanian Common-
wealth, to the late-nineteenth-century
stirrings of a national Belarusian move-
ment. A clear yes-or-no answer does
not quite materialize from the maze of
claims and counterclaims by historians.
But the search leads Wilson to a second
question: Why todays authoritarianism?
What explains the endurance of a throw-
back dictator like Aleksandr Lukashenko?
As Wilson reveals in unvarnished detail,
Europes last dictatorship did not emerge
and then entrench itself by accident, nor
does it represent a break from all the
history that came before. Todays repres-
sive state might have been abetted by
clumsy, miscalculating leaders in the wake
of the Soviet Unions collapse, and later
by the weakness and feuding of the
political opposition. But Lukashenko
knew the soil he tilled.
Leon Trotsky: A Revolutionarys Life. by
joshua rubenstein. Yale University
Press, 2011, 240 pp. $25.00.
Not much new can be added to the story
of a man who has been wondered over,
lionized, and demonized many times
before. The merit of this trim book is that
it pulls together all the essentials of the
life of Leon Trotsky and the revolution
he so signifcantly shaped into a seamless,
intelligent, and wonderfully accessible
synopsis. This book is part of Yales series
of biographies about noteworthy Jews,
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and its particular angle is to understand
Trotsky as a Jew. On the one hand, he
scorned the faith of his fathers: Im not
a Jew; Im a Marxist internationalist.
On the other hand, he showed a special
sensitivity to Jewish suering in a dying
Russian empire and gravitated toward
Jewish communities abroad. Such dichot-
omies defned the man. He was brilliant,
compelling, even admirable as a young
revolutionary, but brutal, arrogant, and
obtuse once in powera contrast Ruben-
stein draws well. In many ways, his life
was a metaphor for the Soviet revolution.
The tragedy at the heart of Leon Trotskys
life, Rubenstein writes, was that it had
begun with contagious idealism and ended
entangled in a murderous dream.
The Politics of Protest in Hybrid Regimes:
Managing Dissent in Post-Communist
Russia. by graeme b. robertson.
Cambridge University Press, 2010,
304 pp. $95.00.
Defeating Authoritarian Leaders in
Postcommunist Countries. by valerie j.
bunce and sharon l. wolchik.
Cambridge University Press, 2011,
396 pp. $95.00 (paper, $36.99).
By one count, somewhere between a
quarter and a third of the countries in
the world are neither fsh nor fowl in
terms of their political systemsthat is,
neither suciently democratic nor authori-
tarian enough to be considered one or
the other. Robertson calls these hybrid
regimes, environments where political
competition exists but in unfair conditions.
Robertson, after long and detailed study,
focuses on the dynamics surrounding
protest eorts in Russia, both on the
street and in the factory. Vladimir Putins
Russia is a model hybrid regime that sees
contestationprovided it is controlled
by the stateas functional and therefore
desirable. The durability of such a regime
depends on three factors: the coherence of
opposition protests, the regimes willing-
ness to mobilize against opposition, and
the level of unity among the political elite.
In an equally thorough study of nine
countries, Bunce and Wolchik concentrate
on elections held between 1998 and 2005,
some of which led to the overthrow of
relatively authoritarian leaders and others
of which did not. They conclude that
elections pose a genuine challenge to
hybrid regimes, but whether they succeed
or not depends on how innovative, ambi-
tious, unifed, and sanguine the opposition
is. Opposition movements with those
qualities can produce what Bunce and
Wolchik call an electoral model of
change. Once successful, this model
spread to other eastern European
countries, aided in important ways by
transnational democracy advocates,
although not aligning precisely with
U.S. democracy-building schemes.
The arguments in both books provide
complementary explanations for why the
Russian presidential elections in March
will likely leave Putin in power. But neither
book does much to explain the outcome
of the Russian parliamentary elections last
December, which produced an important
shift in political momentum away from
Putinism and toward some still-unformed
political alternative.
The Hour of Europe: Western Powers and
the Breakup of Yugoslavia. by josip
glaurdic. Yale University Press,
2011, 432 pp. $55.00.
Glaurdic pulls no punches: that Yugoslavia
blew up so violently is the fault, in the
Recent Books
foreign affairs
.
frst instance, of feckless, myopic European
powers more concerned with outmaneu-
vering each other than with solving real
issues on the ground. Glaurdic argues that
the European Community failed miserably
in Yugoslavia just as it was transforming
itself into the European Union, thereby
doing immeasurable damage to the larger
project of European integration. He
also blames the administration of U.S.
President George H. W. Bush for wash-
ing its hands of the crisis as it escalated
from tension to widespread bloodletting
in 199192. The Americans had initially
embraced Slobodan Milosevic as a nasty
but potentially Western-oriented economic
reformer, largely out of an overarching
dread of instability as communism
collapsed across Eastern Europe. Glaurdics
heavy emphasis on Serbian culpability
for the tragedy that followed will not sit
well with those who point their fngers in
other directions. Nor will his exculpation
of Germanys policy of pushing for
recognition of the defecting republics
of Croatia and Slovenia, seen by many at
the time as speeding Yugoslavias bloody
demise. But Glaurdics critics will have
to argue against a case built from a wider
range of primary sources than anyone
before him has used.
The Strongman: Vladimir Putin and the
Struggle for Russia. by angus
roxburgh. I.B. Tauris, 2011,
288 pp. $28.00.
Vladimir Putin is the quintessential
Rorschach test for Western views of
Russia: something between an emotionless,
steely-eyed creature from a John le Carr
novel and the personifcation of the
shattered hopes for a liberal Russian
democracy, comfortably ensconced in
the Wests embrace. Roxburgh paints a
more compelling portrait. He is sympa-
thetic to what motivates Putin but critical
of what Putin has become during his
years in power. Roxburgh sees Putins
obsession with restoring Russian strength
and his prickly sensitivity to aronts as
understandable but details with obvious
distaste Putins cynical manipulation of
power, his crass image management, and
the unimaginable venality of the political
elite on which he relies. What distinguishes
this account and makes it engrossing,
however, are not such familiar character-
izations. Roxburgh, a journalist and
public relations specialist, worked on a
splendid bbc documentary about the
Putin era, and he uses interviews with
many of the key fgures around Putin
and with senior Western policymakers to
recount in detail what was said and done
as Russia lurched in one direction and
the U.S.-Russian relationship lurched
in another.
Middle East
l. carl brown
Ghosts of Afghanistan: The Haunted Battle-
ground. by jonathan steele.
Counterpoint, 2011, 256 pp. $26.00.
Steele, a veteran foreign correspondent
for The Guardian, frames this exploration
of the past three decades in Afghanistan
by comparing the intervention of the
Soviet Union in the 1980s with that of the
United States in the frst decade of this
century. Both were ill conceived and
should have been avoided, Steele argues,
but the Soviets showed a better ability to
cut their losses than have the Americans
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.
Volume 91 No. 2
(andtheirnatoallies)thusfar.Steele
setsouttodebunkthirteenmythsabout
Afghanistan,includingthefalsenotions
thattheAfghanshavealwaysdefeated
foreignarmies,thattheSovietinvasion
wasanunprovokedattack,thattheTaliban
aremuchmoreoppressivethanprevious
regimes(anadmittedlylowbar),and
thattheTalibandonothaveanypopular
support.SteeleviewstheforcesofAhmad
ShahMassoud,theanti-Talibancom-
manderassassinatedtwodaysbefore9/11,
asnobetterthantheiropponentsand
oersarelativelypositiveappraisalofthe
period(197892)whenAfghanistanwas
ruledbyAfghanCommunists,who,after
all,didrepresenturbanmodernity.This
eminentlyreadablebookissurelythemost
compellingrevisionisthistoryavailable
ofAfghanistaninthemodernera.
The Arab Awakening: America and the
Transformation of the Middle East.by
kenneth m. pollack,daniel l.
byman,akram al-turk, pavel k.
baev, michael s.doran,khaled
elgindy, stephen r. grand,
et al.BrookingsInstitutionPress,
2011,381pp.$26.95.
Eighteenauthorscovertheeventsthathave
roiledtheArabWorldsinceDecember
2010,whenadespairingpeddlerfroma
townintheTunisianhinterlandsethimself
afametoprotesthistreatmentatthe
handsofanoppressivegovernment.
MohamedBouazizisself-immolation
ignitedachainreactionofchallenges
byhithertoseeminglyacquiescentArab
societiestotheirauthoritarianstates.
Somedominoeshavefallen,othersare
atilt,andallhavebeenshaken.This
well-integratedaccountofaregionwide
revolutionaryyearmatching,ifnot
exceeding,inimportanceEuropein1848
or1989includeschaptersonallbuttwo
Arabstates(LebanonandSudan)and
oneonthePalestinians.Otherchapters
treatthereactionsofthenon-Arab
MiddleEasternstatesIran,Israel,
andTurkeyandthoseofChina,the
EuropeanUnion,Russia,and,mostof
all,theUnitedStates.Thecontributors
examineawiderangeoffactorsthat
infuencedtherevolts:newmediatech-
nologies,economicdevelopment,powerful
militaries,democratizationeorts,and
ascendantIslamistparties.Thisvolume
weavestogetherthosedisparateelements,
justifyingitsclaimtoconstitutenotjust
astringofseparateentriesbutagenuine
collaborativework.
Arrows of the Night: Ahmad Chalabis Long
Journey to Triumph in Iraq.by richard
bonin.Doubleday,2011,320pp.$27.95.
Thisisthemostthoroughtellingofthe
storyofAhmadChalabi,thescionof
anupper-classShiiteIraqifamilywho
spentmostofhislifeinexilebutplayed
asignifcantroleinconvincingtheadmin-
istrationofGeorgeW.Bushtoinvade
IraqandoverthrowSaddamHussein
in2003.Itis,equally,thestoryofthe
domesticAmericanrootsofthewar.
Boninreconstructstherelationships
betweenChalabiandhisnow-famous
(orinfamous)neoconservativealliesinthe
BushWhiteHouseandalsoexamines
therolesplayedbymembersofCongress
(DemocraticandRepublican),academ-
ics,andjournalistseagerforascoop.The
dwindlingfewwithintheBeltwaywho
maintainedthatChalabiandhisopposi-
tionmovementenjoyedmoresupport
alongthePotomacthantheEuphrates
provedtobecorrect,butonlyafterthe
23_RecentBooks_pp174_196_Blues.indd 190 1/26/12 10:35 AM
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foreign affairs
.
fact. Arrows of the Night is a frst-rate case
study of both Middle Eastern migr
politics and the American way of dealing
with the Middle East.
Iraq, Its Neighbors, and the United States:
Competition, Crisis, and the Reordering of
Power. edited by henri j. barkey,
scott b. lasensky, and phebe
marr. U.S. Institute of Peace, 2011,
300 pp. $19.95.
Ten seasoned experts take their turns
describing the changes wrought by the
2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq and the changes
still under way, nine years into the post
Saddam Hussein era. Individual chapters
are devoted to the Iraq-related diplomacy
of the Gulf states, Iran, Jordan, Saudi
Arabia, Syria, and Turkey. Concluding
essays address Iraq in the context of Arab
political reform and consider the U.S. role
in Iraq. This book bears out the dictum,
expressed some decades ago by an Arab
diplomat but still valid, that in the Middle
East, everything is linked to everything
else. According to the editors, the United
States should pursue increased engage-
ment with Iraqs neighbors and avoid
heavy-handed involvement in the region,
which could undermine steps Iraqis and
the neighbors need to take to reconcile.
Turkey and Its Neighbors: Foreign Relations
in Transition. by ronald h. linden,
ahmet o. evin, kemal kirisci,
thomas straubhaar, nathalie
tocci, juliette tolay, and
joshua w. walker. Lynne Rienner,
2011, 258 pp. $62.50.
This book brings together American,
European, and Turkish experts on such
diverse subjects as reclaiming Turkeys
imperial past, the countrys move from
confrontation to engagement in the
Middle East, Turkeys relations with its
Black Sea neighbors, Turkish energy
policy (including pipelines being planned
or built), and Turkey as a possible model
of democratization for other Muslim
polities. Subjects usually given separate
chapters in books about Turkeyfor
example, Greek-Turkish relations and
Turkeys relationship with the eu and
the United Statesare here woven into
larger themes. Buttressed by many tables
and fgures and thus a bit ponderous at
times, the book nevertheless oers many
aperus, including this one from Tocci
and Walker: Oddly, Turkey has quickly
become more European, more democratic,
more Islamic, and increasingly more
nationalist simultaneously. The book
covers developments only prior to mid-
2010, but it provides a useful background
for taking the measure of issues that
emerged later, such as Turkeys changing
relations with Israel and Syria.
Asia and Pacic
andrew j . nathan
Saying the Unsayable: Monarchy and
Democracy in Thailand. edited by
sren ivarsson and lotte
isager. NIAS Press, 2010, 304 pp.
$90.00 (paper, $32.00).
The contributors direct an unillusioned
gaze at the mystique of the Thai monarchy.
The countrys pliant news media have
fostered an image of the king as a loving
national father and a Buddhist quasi
deity while building a cult of personality
around members of the royal family. A
network of conservative elites enforces a
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.
Volume 91 No. 2
magic circle of silence around the court
with a lese-majesty law that punishes
oenders with prison sentences of up to
15 years. While popular religion venerates
the kings image as a source of prosperity,
the monarchs policy of village self-
suciency and his sponsored development
programs have only served to legitimate
growing economic inequality. The monar-
chy positions itself as a defender of
democracy, but the king allowed himself
to be used as an alternative source of
legitimacy by those who opposed a freely
elected leader during the 2006 coup.
Instead of helping consolidate national
unity, the contributors argue, the royal
cult increasingly polarizes Thai politics.
Oceans of Crime: Maritime Piracy and
Transnational Security in Southeast Asia
and Bangladesh. by carolin liss.
Institute of Southeast Asian Studies,
2010, 426 pp. $54.90.
This fact-flled, groundbreaking survey
of piracy in the waters of Southeast Asia
and Bangladeshthe areas with the
highest number of pirating incidents in
the worldreveals the problems many
forms and causes. Pirates in these waters
range from opportunistic amateurs to
criminal syndicates. Cargo boats are the
most frequently attacked, usually to be
stripped of their cargoes but sometimes
to be reused or sold. Local fshermen are
robbed of their nets, engines, and catches,
chiey by other fshermen who are impov-
erished because overfshing has depleted
fsh populations. Local navies and coast
guards are underequipped and sometimes
corrupt. A lack of international coordina-
tion across complex maritime borders
makes the job of securing the straits and
intricate coastlines even more dicult.
Private security companies have flled the
gap to some extent, but they are virtually
unregulated. Liss wide-ranging and
detailed feldwork validates her argument
that piracy is an expression of deeper
issues, ranging from coastal poverty to
inadequate maritime regulatory regimes to
the devastation of the ocean environment.
Chinas Local Administration: Traditions
and Changes in the Sub-national Hierarchy.
edited by jae ho chung and
tao-chiu lam. Routledge, 2009,
226 pp. $148.00 (paper, $44.95).
Chinas system of territorial administra-
tion is complicated because the country
is so large and diverse. This survey by a
network of local-studies scholars is an
indispensable guide to the administrative
system below the central level. Chinas
constitution provides for three subnational
tiers: province, county, and township.
But the authors identify nine distinct
governmental units, divided into fve
levels. Today, much of the action in
economic development and social policy
takes place in municipalities (shi), of
which there are about 600, positioned
at three dierent bureaucratic ranks,
depending on their size. The key driver
of the municipalities emergence has
been urbanization, which created the
need for city centers to administer their
increasingly interdependent rural sur-
roundings. A great deal of power and
responsibility have been delegated to
the shi level, along with substantial fscal
independence and the right to experiment
with new policies. Still, the center retains
ultimate control through its power over
ocials careers. Ambitious local ocials
provide much of Chinas dynamism but
also contribute to environmental problems,
Recent Books
foreign affairs
.
corruption, local protectionism, and
economic overheating.
Chinas Thought Management. edited
by anne-marie brady. Routledge,
2011, 212 pp. $125.00.
Looking beneath the superfcial diversity
of Chinese media, Brady and her contribu-
tors expose the continuing role of the
Chinese Communist Partys Propaganda
Department, ocially renamed in English
the Publicity Department in 1998. A softer
stylemarket-friendly, scientifc, high
tech, and politics litehas replaced
Maoist indoctrination. But the news is
still controlled: scandals are spun and
quickly buried, and feel-good symbols of
progress are eagerly promoted. Ocials
in government and the military memorize
carefully crafted formulas that help them
stay in line with party policy, and the
general public imbibes a steady ow of
happy talk that keeps it disengaged from
politics. Case studies show how modern
persuasion techniques maintain the high
level of public support for the government,
the ruling partys frm grip on the military,
and the popularity of the current system
even among Chinese migrs. But the
party has enjoyed less success in rebrand-
ing China internationally as modern and
even democratic. Focusing on top-down
propaganda strategies, the book does not
assess the possible threats posed to thought
management by the growing Chinese
blogosphere or the emerging cadre of
intrepid, truth-seeking Chinese journalists.
Diplomacy: A Singapore Experience.
by s jayakumar. Straits Times
Press, 2011, 316 pp. $26.00.
Jayakumar, a former un ambassador and
former foreign minister for Singapore,
originally prepared this series of case
studies to help train his countrys young
foreign service ocers. The language is
prim by American standards, and the
explicit lessons are fairly obvious: know
your brief; be prepared. But the honest,
meaty narratives oer insights into the
strategic goals and diplomatic means of
one of the worlds most skillful foreign
ministries. Singaporean diplomats use
energy, charm, and expertise to magnify
their inuence in the un and steer regional
organizations in preferred directions.
Singapore often stands up to bigger
powersChina, the United Kingdom,
the United Statesto make sure no one
takes it for granted. But Singapore takes
care to manage its relations and avoid
permanent damage. In dealing with prickly
neighbors, such as Indonesia and Malaysia,
the latter of which controls much of
Singapores water supply, Singapore
relies on both international law and
personal relationships. Jayakumar argues
that other countries nationalist media
often pose obstacles to the rational settle-
ment of issues. Nevertheless, Singapores
diplomats seem able to defend their
countrys interests all over the world
without further inaming opposition
at home or abroad.
Eclipse: Living in the Shadow of Chinas
Economic Dominance. by arvind
subramanian. Peterson Institute
for International Economics, 2011,
236 pp. $21.95.
Subramanian, an economist, argues that
if China grows at roughly the same rate
as other countries that managed to narrow
the gap with richer competitors in the
past, and if Chinas foreign trade increases
at the rate some theories predict for
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.
Volume 91 No. 2
countriesofitseconomicsize,thenChina
willsoonbecometheworldslargest
economyanditscurrencywillbecomean
internationalreservecurrency.Thoseare
twobigifs,buttheauthordoesnotseem
particularlyconcernedwithestablishing
theirlikelihood.Heismoreinterestedin
applyingformulasderivedfromeconomic
historytoquantifythesizeandfxthe
dateoftheeconomicpowertransition
thatwillhappenassoonasthisdecade,
hesaysifcurrenttrendscontinue.Words
suchaseclipse,shadow,anddomi-
nancelendabracingurgencytothat
prediction,asdosomenightmarescenarios
scatteredthroughoutthediscussion.Yet
suchrhetoriccontradictsthenon-zero-
sumprinciplesofeconomics,aswellas
SubramaniansownadvicethattheUnited
Statesshouldcontinuetocooperatewith
China.Itremainsunclearhowthegrowth
ofChinasprosperityandtheconvertibility
ofitscurrencybothlongtimeU.S.
policygoalswillthreatenAmerican
interests.
Social Networks and Japanese Democracy:
The Benefcial Impact of Interpersonal
Communication.by kenichi ikeda
and sean richey.Routledge,2011,
164pp.$130.00.
IkedaandRicheyaimtodetermine
whetherConfucianvaluesinJapansuch
asobediencetohierarchyandapreference
forsocialharmonyoverdebatedampen
thepositiveeectsofcivicengagement
onJapanesedemocracy.Analyzingdata
fromsurveysofJapanesevotersconducted
between2001and2005,theyfndthatthe
legacyofConfucianismgenerallydoes
notpreventcivicengagement(defnedas
participationininformalnetworks)from
producingpositivedemocraticeectsin
Japan.However,theyalsoconcedethat
JapanislessinfuencedbyConfucian
valuesthanotherAsiancountries,where
thosevaluesmightinterferemorewith
democraticgovernance.Thebookcon-
tainstenshortchapters,manyofwhich
presentregressiontablesusingthesameor
similarindependentvariables.Theauthors,
however,havechosentowriteanew
chapterforeverynewsetofdependent
variablespoliticalengagement,political
knowledge,policypreferences,andpolitical
tolerance,amongothers.Andeachchapter
reviewstheexistingscholarlyliterature,
methods,variables,andregressionresults.
Asaconsequence,thebookisshortbut
nonethelessrepetitive.
margarita estvez-abe
Africa
nicolas van de walle
Africas Odious Debts: How Foreign Loans
and Capital Flight Bled a Continent.by
lonce ndikumana and james k.
boyce.ZedBooks,2011,152pp.
$107.95(paper,$22.95).
Thenumbersarestartling.From1970
to2008,thecombinedforeigndebtof
Africancountriesrosefromlessthan
$50billiontomorethan$200billionin
constantdollars.Duringthesametime,
capitalfightfromthe33sub-Saharan
Africancountriesforwhichdecentdata
existstotaled$735billion.Inthisarresting
analysis,twoeconomistsshowthat
thosenumbersarecloselyrelated.Alarge
proportionofthepubliclycontracted
debtwassiphonedobyindividuals,
ofteninkeypolicymakingroles,andthen
expatriatedforprivategain.Ndikumana
23_RecentBooks_pp174_196_Blues.indd 194 1/26/12 10:35 AM
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foreign affairs
.
and Boyce estimate that as a result, Africa,
the worlds poorest region, is actually a
net creditor to the rest of the world. Much
of this lively and readable book is con-
cerned with the combination of sheer
incompetence, delusion, corruption, and
regulatory failure that led Western banks
and fnancial institutions to lend money
to the region, even though it would
obviously never be repaid. The book
makes a compelling case that because of
the way it was created, this odious debt
should not be repaid today. Of course, the
more important practical issue for Africa
is how to bring about the repatriation of
all that squandered capital.
Remaking Rwanda: State Building and
Human Rights After Mass Violence.
edited by scott straus and
lars waldorf. University of Wis-
consin Press, 2011, 320 pp. $26.95.
There is still a steady ow of books
about the Rwandan genocide of 1994.
But Rwandas present circumstances
have been largely neglected. This edited
volume is perhaps the frst serious attempt
to assess contemporary politics in Rwanda
over the course of the last decade. The
portrait that emerges is decidedly mixed.
The country boasts what is perhaps the
least corrupt civil service in Africa, a
disciplined and sometimes visionary
instrument of economic and social devel-
opment. On the other hand, the book
argues, the government of President Paul
Kagame displays some dogmatically
authoritarian tendencies, which might
ultimately hamper economic and political
development. The books best chapters
show the extent to which the government
has instrumentalized the memory of the
genocide to stie dissent and international
criticism, sometimes with considerable
cynicism. One theme that emerges from
the book is that the regimes judicial
system for dealing with the crimes of the
1990s, although innovative and sometimes
genuinely participatory, has been manipu-
lated to intimidate Kagames political
opponents, while the regime still refuses
to address the considerable human rights
violations its own agents committed
during that era.
From Protest to Parties: Party-Building
and Democratization in Africa. by
adrienne lebas. Oxford University
Press, 2011, 270 pp. $99.00.
This book examines contemporary politics
in Kenya, Zambia, and Zimbabwe to
understand why some opposition
parties manage to wrest power away
from long-standing autocratic rulers, as
in Zambia in 1991, and others do not,
as in Kenya in 1992. LeBas ingenious
answer is that autocratic regimes establish
the instruments of their own demise
by creating relatively strong corporate
actors, such as trade unions, to buttress
their own rule. Indeed, trade unions
created by African regimes have some-
times turned against their patrons and
become the core of eective opposition
parties. LeBas shows how a highly
contentious transition to democracy
can help strengthen political parties
but also tends to increase the possibility
of political violenceas it has in both
Kenya and Zimbabwe. The books analysis
of party competition in these three
countries is astute and rings true. But
additional evidence from other political
transitions is needed to determine
whether LeBas fndings are applicable
to other low-income countries.
Recent Books
.
Volume 91 No. 2
An Inconvenient Youth: Julius Malema and
the New ANC. by fiona forde.
Picador Africa, 2011, 274 pp. R150.00.
Close to two decades of majority rule in
South Africa have improved the welfare
of its black citizens. But the countrys
level of economic inequality remains
among the highest in the world; worse,
wealth correlates uncomfortably with race,
with whites controlling a hugely dispro-
portionate share of assets and income.
Fordes biography of Julius Malema, a
rising populist frebrand, demonstrates
that resentment of this racial inequality
has long festered among the black popu-
lation, providing ambitious politicians
with a temptingly easy path to political
notoriety. Forde portrays Malema as
the most skillful of these politicians and
documents his rapid rise to power, from a
childhood of poverty through the ranks of
the African National Congress, where he
served as president of the Youth League
until the party suspended him from that
post last year after he was convicted of hate
speech against whites. Forde portrays the
anc as an increasingly abby organization
that is losing the legitimacy necessary to
prevent the racialist demagoguery in which
Malema dabbles. At the same time, her
fnely grained portrait of Malema makes
clear that he is more interested in power
than in redressing historical inequities.
South Africa and Contemporary Counterin-
surgency: Roots, Practices, Prospects.
edited by deane-peter baker
and evert jordaan. Double Storey
Books, 2011, 288 pp. $37.95.
As the South African army has played
an increasingly important role in un and
African Union peacekeeping operations, it
has had to come to grips with a politically
inconvenient fact: during apartheid, the
South African army gained substantial
experience in nontraditional warfare and
counterinsurgency, fghting against libera-
tion movements across southern Africa.
Following the transition to majority rule
in the 1990s, ocial policy was to forget
that experience, now viewed as a regrettable
consequence of the apartheid regimes
deplorable policies. This remarkable
collection of essays by members of the
South African security establishment has
the objective of legitimating anew their
expertise in counterinsurgency, in order
to draw lessons for the contemporary
mission of the South African army. It
turns out that the strategies and techniques
that the apartheid-era army developed
in, say, Namibia in the late 1970s remain
highly instructive for peacekeeping in
places such as the contemporary Demo-
cratic Republic of the Congo. The authors
also cannot help but remark that the
counterinsurgency doctrines developed
by the American and British militaries
in Afghanistan and Iraq bear no small
resemblance to the South African armys
earlier eorts.
Letters to the Editor
Jack Chow on Chinas health crisis,
David Harris on Israels quest for peace, and others
[197]
cough i t up
TotheEditor:
Yanzhong Huang (The Sick Man
of Asia, November/December 2011)
paints a troubling picture of a China
that has rapidly industrialized yet lags
in modernizing its health-care system.
Yet in his cogent history of Chinas
health policy, much of which centers on
self-reliance, Huang puzzlingly omits
Chinas success in winning nearly $1 billion
in recent years from the Global Fund to
Fight aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
That the countrys health ocials have
had to resort to tapping a fund ostensibly
dedicated to helping the worlds poorest
countries speaks to their inability to
persuade the government to pay for
public health with its national coers.
Only when the incongruity of a fnancial
giant getting grants at the expense of
impoverished African countries was
illuminated did China choose to stop
taking Global Fund awards.
Ultimate responsibility for transform-
ing Chinas health conditions lies squarely
with the countrys national leaders, not
just its health ocials. Considering the
benefts derived from investing in health,
the pathway ahead for China should be
evident: identify attainable public health
goals and standards, bolster resources for
health-care work on the frontlines, allow
more nongovernmental organizations and
private-sector groups to participate, and
educate Chinese citizens about better
habits, such as smoking cessation. In
taking these steps, China would earn a
long-term health dividend that would
sustain its economy and bring its popula-
tion to a standard worthy of international
recognition and to a level commensurate
with what it has accomplished in
economic prowess.
j ack c. chow
DistinguishedServiceProfessorof
GlobalHealth,HeinzCollege,Carnegie
MellonUniversity
TotheEditor:
Although Yanzhong Huangs overall
assessment of the health-care challenges
facing China is accurate, the current
situation is not as desperate as the reader
is led to believe.
Over the last four decades, China has
experienced profound and rapid demo-
graphic, epidemiologic, and socioeconomic
changes that would have tested the
strength of any health-care system. But
the countrys investments in maternal
and child health and infectious disease
24_Letters_pp197.indd 197 1/17/12 3:38 PM
.
Volume 91 No. 2
controlhavesharplyreducedmaternal
andchildmortalityandtheprevalence
anddeadlinessofinfectiousdiseases.
TheinfantmortalityrateinChina
decreasedfrom38deathsper1,000live
birthsin1990to16per1,000in2010,
andoverthesameperiod,themortality
rateforchildrenunderfveyearsofage
droppedfrom48per1,000livebirthsto
just18.Thematernalmortalityratiohas
alsofallen,from110per100,000live
birthsin1990to38in2008.
Furthermore,theprevalenceof
tuberculosiscasesinChinain2010was
estimatedat216per100,000,areduction
of45percentfromtheratein2000
thankstothegovernmentstuberculosis
controlprogram.In2008,Chinaalso
becamethefrstcountryintheworldto
eradicatetheparasiticdiseaseflariasis.
Huangmakesonlyaquickandrather
shallowreferencetothehealthreforms
thatChinalaunchedin2009.Beijing
hasclearlyrecognizedthechallengethat
theincreasingprevalenceofnoncom-
municablediseasesposestothehealth-
caresystem,andatthattime,itlaunched
acomprehensivehealth-sectorreform
basedonfvepillars:expandinghealth
insurancetoachieveuniversalhealth
coverageby2020;developinganational
drugsystemtoimprovequalityofcare,
lowercosts,andreduceabuse;improving
primary-caredelivery;promotingequity
intheprovisionofessentialpublichealth
services;andreformingpublichospitals.
Thereformagendawassetaftera
thoroughconsultationprocessinvolving
severalgovernmentalentities;civil-society
organizations;academics;international
partners,includingtheWorldHealth
OrganizationandtheWorldBank;and
privateconsultingfrms.
AlthoughChinaisnowherecloseto
reachingitshealth-careobjectivesinthe
nearfuture,ithasalreadylaidtheground-
workforamoreprominentstaterolein
developingandsustaininguniversal
healthcoverageandimprovingequity
inhealthandhealthcareby2020,stepsin
therightdirectionthattheauthorfailed
tofullyacknowledge.
shenglan tang
Professor of Medicine and Global
Health, Duke University
eni s bari s
Sector Manager; Health, Nutrition, and
Population; Middle East and North Africa
Region; World Bank
True peace i s hard To fi nd
To the Editor:
Afterreadingthecompellingcase
madebyYosefKuperwasserandShalom
LipnerinTheProblemIsPalestinian
Rejectionism(November/December2011),
itwasquitejarringtoreadthecompanion
piece,IsraelsBunkerMentality,by
RonaldKrebs.
Krebsargumentboilsdowntothis:
Israelwasdoingquitenicelyasaliberal,
secularstateuntil1967,whenawar
mysteriouslydescendedonit,andsince
thenanilliberal,ethnocentricnationalism
hastakenoverandredefnedthecountry.
Intheprocess,Krebscontends,Israel
becameenamoredwiththeoccupation
ofterritoriesacquiredduringtheSix-Day
War,helpedalongbyagrowingultra-
Orthodoxcommunityandlarge-scale
Russianimmigration.
Itisnotuntiltheessaysverylast
paragraphthatKrebsnotes,Ofcourse,
Israelcannotendtheoccupationalone.
Yetuntilthatpoint,hegivesprecisely
theoppositeimpression,namely,thatit
foreignaffairs
.
is in Israels hands to bring the confict
to an end.
Poll after poll has revealed that a
majority of the Israeli public supports a
two-state agreement. Even as they have
coped with deadly waves of terrorism,
Hezbollahs growing arsenal in Lebanon,
Hamas control of Gaza, Irans nuclear
ambitions, and Palestinian President
Mahmoud Abbas refusal to negotiate,
most Israelis still believe that a two-state
deal remains the best possible outcome.
Moreover, four consecutive Israeli
prime ministersEhud Barak, Ariel
Sharon, Ehud Olmert, and Benjamin
Netanyahuhave endorsed the two-
state vision, acknowledging the need for
a painful and risky territorial withdrawal
in exchange for a peace accord and an end
to the confict. But it has not happened
yet. Why?
According to Krebs, one reason is that
Israels commitment to peace has . . . too
often been halfhearted. History suggests
otherwise. Barak, in collaboration with
U.S. President Bill Clinton, tried to strike
a breakthrough two-state deal with the
Palestinians until the very end of his term
in oce. Sharon broke with his own Likud
Party to push through a total withdrawal
from Gaza. Olmert went beyond Barak
and Clinton, oering Abbas the equiva-
lent of 100 percent of the West Bank.
And Netanyahu led his reluctant Likud
to accept the two-state principle and
agreed to an unprecedented settlement
freeze. Yet none of the four Israeli leaders
found a willing partner on the other side
and therefore had nothing to show for
his eorts.
In the end, alas, neither the late Pales-
tinian leader Yasir Arafat nor Abbas was
willing to shatter the Palestinian peoples
dream of Israels destruction, which has
been nurtured for more than 60 years.
Nor were they prepared to abandon the
right of return and thus arm Israels
legitimacy, whatever its fnal borders, as
the Jewish homeland.
davi d harri s
Executive Director, American Jewish
Committee
reports of the bear s death are
greatly exaggerated
To the Editor:
Nicholas Eberstadt (The Dying
Bear, November/December 2011) is
surely correct that a rapidly depopulating
Russia would be confronted with a number
of essentially irresolvable economic,
military, and political problems. How-
ever, data from Russias Federal State
Statistics Service suggest that over the
last decade, Russias demographic indica-
tors have in fact been getting better.
Moreover, this improvement has intensi-
fed since the onset of the 2008 global
fnancial crisis, confounding a number
of Western experts who predicted that
the downturn would have a similar eect
within Russia to that of the countrys debt
default in 1998, when fertility plummeted
and mortality skyrocketed.
Russias demographic improvements
are considerable: between 2000 and 2010,
Russias rate of external mortality (deaths
from vehicular accidents, alcohol poison-
ing, murder, and suicide) decreased by
31 percent, its fertility rate increased by 31
percent, and its natural rate of population
loss (the rate at which the population is
shrinking without accounting for immi-
gration) fell by 75 percent. In fact, if one
takes immigration into account, Russias
overall population has essentially been
.
Volume 91 No. 2
stagnantforthepastthreeorfouryears
whichwouldhavebeenunfathomable
tenyearsago,whenthecountryspopu-
lationwasshrinkingbyamillionpeople
ayear.
Eberstadtsomissionofanyrelevant
comparisonsistroubling.Forstarters,more
enlighteningthancomparingRussians
toWesternersRussianshavebeenmore
unhealthy,moredrink-sodden,andshorter
livedthantheircounterpartsintheWest
sincepublichealthstatisticswerefrst
collectedinthelatenineteenthcentury
wouldbecomparingtheRussiansof
todaytotheRussiansoftenyearsago.
Alsoglaringistheomissionof
Ukraine,acountrythatneighborsRussia
andhasperformedsignifcantlyworse
intermsofdemographicsoverthepast
decade.In2010,despitehavingapopula-
tionofonly45.8millionpeople,Ukraine
hadanaturalpopulationlossof200,000.
Incontrast,theso-calleddyingbear,
withapopulationof142millionpeople,
naturallyshrankby240,000thatyear.
AnditisnotjustUkraine:thatsame
year,threeothercountriesthatneighbor
RussiaBelarus,Latvia,andLithuania
suerednaturalpopulationlossesthat
wereproportionallymoreseverethan
Russias,asdidBulgaria,Croatia,Hungary,
Romania,andSerbia.Inotherwords,
postcommunisteasternEuropeancountries
areexperiencingasystemicdemographic
crisis,which,inturn,suggeststhat
EberstadtscalltopubliclyberateMoscow
wouldnothavemuchofanimpacton
Russiasdemographicoutlook.
mark adomani s
Arlington, Virginia
debati ng europe
To the Editor:
AndrewMoravcsiksreviewof
DavidMarquandsbookThe End of the
West (RecentBooksonInternational
Relations,September/October2011)
characterizedMarquandasbotha
politicalturncoatandaweak-kneed,
inconsistentthinkerwhohasreversed
hispositiononEuropeanintegration.
Thesearedamagingaccusations,and
botharemanifestlyuntrue.Marquand
hasalwaysbeenapillaroftheUnited
Kingdomsdemocraticleft;hestuck
withtheSocialDemocraticPartyfrom
starttofnish,andhehasneverwavered
inhisadvocacyofEuropeanintegration.
norman davi es
Professor Emeritus, University
of London
Foreign Affairs (issn 00157120), March/April 2012, Volume 91, Number 2. Published six times annually
( January, March, May, July, September, November) at 58 East 68th Street, New York, NY 10065.
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Publication MailMail # 1572121. Periodicals postage paid in New York, NY, and at additional
mailing oces. postmaster:SendaddresschangestoForeign Affairs,P.O.Box60001,Tampa,FL
33662-0001. From time to time, we permit certain carefully screened companies to send our
subscribersinformationaboutproductsorservicesthatwebelievewillbeofinterest.Ifyouprefernot
toreceivesuchinformation,pleasecontactusattheTampa,FL,addressindicatedabove.
The World Economic Forum is an independent international organization committed to improving the state of the world
by engaging leaders in partnerships to shape global, regional and industry agendas.
Incorporated as a foundation in 1971, and based in Geneva, Switzerland, the World Economic Forum is impartial and not-
for-profit; it is tied to no political, partisan or national interests.
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Creating Future Global Leaders
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For more information, visit www.weforum.org/glf
165_59_WEF 11/25/09 1:52 PM Page 1
1. Christmas is No Time for an Iranian Revolution.
by hooman majd. Washington and the West
have been ramping up the pressure with
sanctions. None of it will work. The country
is poised not for revolution, but more of the
same. ForeignAffairs.com/Majd_Iran
2. Chinas Real Estate Bubble May Have Just Popped.
by patrick chovanec. As the Chinese
real eastate market corrects itself, the countrys
economy is convulsing and sending shockwaves
through the global economy.
ForeignAffairs.com/Chovanec_China
3. Obamas Counterproductive New Iran Sanctions.
by suzanne maloney. The new sanctions
regime places Washingtons tactics and objec-
tives at odds. In eect, it has backed itself into a
policy of regime change, an outcome it has
little ability to inuence.
ForeignAffairs.com/Maloney_Sanctions
4. Best International Relations Books of 2011.
by the foreign affairs capsule
reviewers. Ten scholars pick the three best
books of 2011. ForeignAffairs.com/Best_Books
5. The Case For Regime Change in Iran.
by jamie m. fly and gary schmitt.
The United States should plan a military
operation that aims to destabilize the regime
and, in turn, resolves the Iranian nuclear crisis
once and for all. ForeignAffairs.com/Fly_Regime
6. What it Will Take to Intervene in Syria. by
michael weiss. Outsiders are calling for
a humanitarian intervention to stop Bashar
al-Assads killing sprees. But for it to work,
Syrias various opposition groups will have
to rst coalesce into a single, unied force.
ForeignAffairs.com/Weiss_Syria
7. Chinas Pakistan Conundrum. by evan a.
feigenbaum. China will not simply bail
out Pakistan. Rather, it will pursue prots,
security, and geopolitical advantage regard-
less of Islamabads preferences.
ForeignAffairs.com/Feigenbaum_China
8. Why Panettas Pentagon Cuts Are Easier Than You
Think. by lawrence j. korb. Defense
budget cuts wont make the United States
less secure. The Pentagon does not have a
resource problem, it has an administrative
problem. ForeignAffairs.com/Korb_Cuts
9. Why Obama Cant Close Guantnamo. by
carol rosenberg. Obamas self-imposed
deadline to close Guantnamo within a year
of taking oce is long past. Why it remains
open is a story of cynical congressional politics
and bureaucratic ineciency.
ForeignAffairs.com/Rosenberg_Guantanamo
10. How Assad Stayed In PowerAnd How Hell Try
to Keep It. by tony badran. Throughout the
year, Assad relied on Iran and Russia to block
international intervention, hoping to buy time
Its not workingbut he has no other options.
ForeignAffairs.com/Badran_Assad
ForeignAffairs.com Top Ten
The top-ranking online articles from winter 2o12.
MA12TopTen_08_BESTSELLERS_TEMPLATE2.qxd 1/26/12 1:40 PM Page 1
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The Case

DAVID H. BAYLEY AND ROBERT M. PERITO

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